


fragments

by foxbones



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Post-Game, a chaotic good buff lesbian so foxbones has to stan, a tribute to Lesbian Kassandra and her Lesbianism, dlc? what dlc lol, kyra bias because kyra is bae, long may she reign, pre-game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-10-14 09:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17506295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxbones/pseuds/foxbones
Summary: someone will remember usI sayeven in another time- sappho fragment 147Kassandra and her women - before, during, and after.





	1. before

  
  
someone will remember us   
I say   
even in another time

\- sappho fragment 147, translated by anne carson

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sailors talk of sirens. Gods’ hands reaching down to stir the waters, blinding white lights that dance on the horizon. They say there are strange beasts the length of an island who swallow ships whole. Women who birth monsters in caves - with their own eyes they’ve seen them, squatting in the dirt - or women who fight like monsters, tearing off the ears of their challengers with their teeth. She likes the men at the docks, the ones with salt in their beards and black fingernails, white scars all the way up their sun-cured arms. They change with the tides, old and young, sour-tempered or smiling or too friendly. Some she learns to avoid. But most don’t mind her when they hear her footfall on the dock, or notice the girl halfway up a mast. She is good at not being noticed when she wishes.

“Who do you belong to?” they will say, the new faces, when they catch her scampering between them. Hoist her up onto their shoulders like a daughter, like the ones they left at home. Some have daughters that won’t remember their names when they return, or daughters that will never come to meet them at the shore again. She knows these men by the way they look at her, too long or not at all.

“Markos,” someone says, used to the girl who climbs ships like trees.

“Markos? What woman is foolish enough to let that _malaka_ put a bastard in her?” They catch Kassandra by the back of her neck, muss her hair. “Your mother must be stupid. Pretty like you, but stupid.”

“Not her _pater_. She is the foundling. The one that came out of the sea.”

“So you are a gift from Poseidon?” A grin and a wink. “Or maybe you are a siren.”

“I can’t sing,” she says.

“So you claim. Until you learn, and lure men to their deaths.”

Kassandra wiggles out of his grip then, hands on her hips, head cocked. Already, she has the smirk of someone who knows better. “I can whistle.”

This makes the men laugh. “There you have it. A whistling siren. They go in search of your tune and never come back.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

First, she and Markos share a hut crowded between the stalls of Sami. Then, a few rooms above a warehouse. But business is good for Markos, and consequently good for Kassandra, too, and Markos gets a house in the hills under Mount Ainos, and Kassandra a room of her own.

“You earned this,” Markos says. She catches the pouch he throws her, drachmae and _pasteli._ On her bed, a new dagger. The handle is sized for an older girl, but she will grow into it.

In the meantime, Markos makes deals with men from all over the seas. Kassandra slips through holes in walls and moves silently behind curtains, a ghost small enough to go unseen. Where Markos points, she disappears and comes back with full hands. They split the spoils unevenly, but she doesn’t tell him of the things she pockets - a few drachmae, a necklace or a charm. Not for her to keep, but for the children of fishermen, the ones who go to begging when their fathers don’t come back from the sea.

One day Markos pulls her out into the dusty yard in front of the house, introduces her to a man twice her height in pitted armor.

“You’re getting too old to be a shadow.”

She scowls. “But I like being a shadow.”

“Too bad. No more playing a little thief, Kassandra. You’re going to be as tall as a cypress in no time, and you won’t fit in the cracks anymore, will you?” He slaps the armored man on the back. “This is Heracles.”

Her eyes widen. “Heracles?”

A snort. “Not the real one. He’s a brawler, it’s what they call him in the pit. But he beats men like the seed of Zeus, that is for certain. He’s going to teach you to fight.” Markos smirks at her. “You are still my right hand, Kassandra. But instead of being the fingers that pluck gold from pockets, you are going to be the strong arm.”

Kassandra flexes, frowning up at Heracles. “What’s wrong with my arms?”

Heracles laughs, a sound like the earth breaking open. “Too wiry. We will give you the arms of a brawler.”

“What if I don’t want to be a brawler?”

“Then a _misthios_ ,” he says. He reaches for her, and she swings out of the way, and he laughs even harder. “You will earn your coin fighting, I can tell you that.”

“Fine,” she says. “But I’ll see if I like it first.”

She does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re bleeding.” Markos raises an eyebrow as she walks in, glances up from where he counts his drachmae, but she shrugs it off, wipes at her forehead with the back of her arm. It comes away with a crimson smear. Later she will find where the skin has split in two places, a line through her brow that will never fill in.

“It’s nothing.”

He chuckles. “If I went down to Sami and walked into the _kapeleia,_ would I find a sailor who says a girl cornered him and beat him bloody? I wonder what his side of the story is.”

“He liked to grab girls. Not me. Little girls.” She spits a pink gob onto the floor, grins. “You can go talk to him, but he’s not awake to answer you.”

“You’re lucky I’m not trying to marry you off, Kassandra. Husbands don’t like a wife who can choke them unconscious.”

“I don’t want a husband.” She spins, a finger pointed in his face, even if she knows he will smirk at the threat. “Ever.”

“You’re of more use to me training as a _misthios_ than learning to play house for some farmer. Pity you weren’t born a man. You could benefit from a wife at home while you make your living on the road.” The way he looks at her, there is a question there, and he pauses, studying her the way he studies a product for inconsistencies. “You don’t have to have a husband, but would you like to have a man?”

“You can’t have one shipped to the island like your vases, Markos.”

He laughs. “On the contrary, Kassandra, they arrive at the docks every morning with the regularity of orders. If your taste is in the seafaring, that is. But I am serious, because you are coming of age soon, and I don’t want you to get....restless.”

“Restless?”

“Eros goes mad with no one to love.”

Something rises in her chest, like swallowing water before a dive. “I don’t want a man.”

“Well,” he smirks. “I thought as much.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing, Kassandra.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Six summers after the celebration of her adolescence, a ship arrives from Mytilene, a merchant come to see Markos, his daughter in gold bracelets and a _peplos_ the color of the sky at dusk. Kassandra sits cross-legged in the corner, a wooden sword at her feet, watching. The girl watches back.

Her name is Thalia. When the sun sets, she comes up to the roof and takes Kassandra’s hand, guides it to her breast.

“What are you doing?”

“I am showing you,” Thalia says, her voice a whisper, so light Kassandra is sure that her words have been carried on the wind to some other place, a white island where the sand is too light to trace their steps, and no one can know what it is they have done there.  


 

 

 

“Come home to Lesbos with me,” Thalia says, her breath warm and salty. “I don’t want to leave you here.”

There is slick and sweat where their arms and legs are tangled. Kassandra imagines a knot of rope, never to be undone. The shed is hot, flies tracing their bodies like their own hands did earlier, landing on bare backs and faces. Shards of old and broken clay jars litter the ground beneath them, sharp in Kassandra’s spine when before she had held Thalia above her, shifted and moved and ignored all that wasn’t the feeling. She did not know anything could feel like this.

“But Markos--”

“Markos is not your _pater_.” Thalia smirks, rolling out from under her. “Whose permission do you need? You are grown, your own woman. You belong to nobody.”

But Kassandra wraps her arms around her waist, pulling her back down. “I belong to you.”

“So come with me.” Her hand finds Kassandra’s, leads it back down, down between Thalia’s legs. “You are so good at this. How could I just leave you behind?”

“What will I do in Mytilene?”

“Whatever you want. Stay in my bed all day, if you like.”

“So I can be a _misthios_?”

“I don’t care what you do, as long as you still do _this_.” Thalia presses closer for emphasis, her mouth in Kassandra’s ear.  “Sneak out tonight, come down to the docks in Sami. I will wait for you there.”

 

 

 

A full moon, so white it seems to scald the ground where it breaks the blue haze. A sign from Selene, Kassandra thinks, or Artemis. She hopes it is the latter, a goddess who would surely light the way for one girl to rush into the arms of another. She has one leg out the window, her sack in her fist and her heart somewhere flat beneath her tongue, when she is interrupted. A wrist encircles her ankle; the tug brings her down hard, fast, slamming her onto her back to look up into the eyes of Markos. Her instinct is to fight, and it is a well-trained instinct - her hands ball, her legs tighten to bring her back to her feet, but it is Markos, complicated sad-eyed Markos, and the fall has stolen her breath.

“I know you aren’t sneaking away, never to come back,” he says, lifting the sack where it’s spilled on the floor, its contents now on display - her meager collection of belongings, those few things she has called her own over the years. His sandal presses down onto her splayed fingers. “I know you wouldn’t do that to Markos.”

“I--” she starts, but his heel digs and swivels. It is no accident; this is the Markos who makes deals in dark rooms, who pays for palms to be cut open, who is reckless and purposeful all at once.

“Who gave you these things?” He shakes the sack. “I did. So what do you do with my things, Kassandra? Are you stealing them? Are you a thief?”

“No, Markos.”

“You like that whelp from Mytilene, but you don’t know her like I do, Kassandra.”

She scoffs, resists the urge to spit at his feet. “You don’t know her at all.”

“What did she promise you? To live in the house of her father? To be her little lover? I know Evaenetos. He will not take you in. She will go home to marry in Lesbos, Kassandra. She has no room for you in her life there.” He bends down, his voice lowering. “She is a liar, Kassandra.”

“She isn’t.”

“Her father is a crook. So is she. It isn’t her fault, being raised by one, but that’s what you’re dealing with, Kassandra. You can’t trust her.”

“You’re wrong.” She pushes him off of her, shakes her wounded fingers out. She can ignore that one or two are likely broken. “She loves me.”

“She loves the way you waggle your hand between her legs.” He laughs out loud at her expression. “What, you think I didn’t know what you were up to? Slinking around the roof, hiding in that shed. You have to learn to be more careful if you are going to fuck all my business’ daughters.”

“You won’t have to worry about it anymore. I’m leaving Kephallonia.”

And now he is really laughing, nearly bent over from the effort. “Of course you are. Did she say they would wait for you on the ship?”

“She’s there now.”

“They left at sundown.”

Why does her mouth go dry? Why does she pause, and not know what to say? “No.”

“Go down to the dock if you don’t believe me.” His face softens, and he drops a hand onto her shoulder.  “I am trying to protect you, Kassandra.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You and I are a team, aren’t we? I have looked out for your best interests since the very beginning, since I pulled you off that beach. And who is she to lead you on and leave you in the dust? Just some lying scamp from Lesbos.” Markos gestures at the window, shrugging. “Go see for yourself.”

 

 

 

The docks are empty but for small local skiffs, a fisherman repairing his nets. The ship from Mytilene left many hours ago, he says. That girl with the black hair, hair like a cascade of dark water, he says. Yes, she was on it. How could I have missed it? he says. How could I have missed a girl as beautiful as that?

Markos says nothing when she returns. Only sends up wine to her room, and a bowl of warm olives. In the morning, she goes back to training, trying to break every bone in her body with the effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zita’s lap is warm when Kassandra’s face falls into it, her forehead pressed to the soft of Zita’s belly, her cheeks against flush thighs. It is Zita’s fingers in her hair now, stroking her temples, pulling on the tangles of her locks. Zita’s smell - sweat and black pepper, musk and oil and the bitter incense that floats down from the temple of Zeus, down through the windows of Zita’s room off the market.

Kassandra knows it well: the rudimentary mural of Aphrodite painted by an artist who once came through Sami seeking passage to Athens; the flowers hanging from the window; the noise of the port and the market and the road lost to the sound of Zita, her gentle gasps, her voice low and always achy at the edges. She’s had bruises kissed here, wounds from bad contracts carefully bandaged, naps when she can escape Markos’ orders long enough.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Zita says.

“Been busy.”

“He’s had you running from one end of this island to the other, hasn’t he?”

“That’s business lately.” She stretches, nuzzles closer to press her nose to the other woman’s skin. “And how’s your business? Good?”

“Why wouldn’t business be good? I’m the only _pornai_ on the island. I have no _pornoboskós_ to bother me. And a _misthios_ with the forearms of a goddess keeps showing up at my door.” She leans forward, her mouth grazing the back of Kassandra’s neck. “No, I have nothing to complain about.”

There’s a faint knock. “Kassandra,” comes a muffled voice, unmistakably Phoibe. “Markos wants you.”

“ _Malaka_ ,” she groans, still facedown into Zita’s thighs. “I just got here.”

“Who does he want you to intimidate now?”

“I don’t know, probably some merchant who charges one drachmae too many for wine.” She pushes herself up onto her elbows, sighing. “I’m beginning to hate that vineyard of his.”

“Go, go,” Zita lifts her by her chin, high enough to kiss her on the lips, then gently pushes her out of the bed. “Before he starts fussing like an old woman. He’ll be down here himself to yell at me for being such a terrible distraction.”

“But I _like_ to be distracted by you.”

“I like it, too. Very much.” She smiles. “Back to work, _misthios_.”

The door opens a crack, Phoibe’s hand waving from the other side. “Hurry up, Kassandra.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” She pulls her belt back on, shifting the daggers into place and hesitating at the unfamiliar weight. They’re new, bought from the latest contract she filled, the finest she’s ever worn.

A man spits when she exits, shaking his head. “Some of us are only on shore for a night. You had better be paying extra to use up all the time of that _khamaitypếs_.”

It takes little effort to lift the man from the ground using only his neck. “If you call her that again, I’ll break both your legs.” She smirks, dropping him roughly. “Have a nice time on Kephallonia.”

Phoibe walks backwards as they start up the hill so she can look directly at the man when she pulls her face into a grimace, wagging her tongue and waving her hands. Kassandra catches her and grins.

“Careful who you make faces at, you little satyr. You don’t want trouble.”

Phoibe whistles to herself, a whiff of triumph to her gait. “If there’s trouble, you’ll take care of me.”

“What if I’m not there?”

“Then you’ll come running. You take care of me, I take care of you.”

Kassandra can’t help but laugh at this, the younger girl’s sudden look of conviction. “Oh, you take care of me, I see. And how is that?”

“Markos said if I found you with Zita, I’m supposed to tell him so he can dock half your pay today. But I won’t tell Markos. I’ll say you were in the _taverna_.” Phoibe beams up at her. “You like Zita.”

“I do.”

“Does Zita like you?”

“What do you think?”

“Markos says she plays with your heart for drachmae. He says that’s what she does for a living.”

She rolls her eyes, nearly able to hear his tone in her head. “Not exactly.”

“But you don’t pay her, do you?”

“Of course I pay her. Just like people pay me for what I do.”

“Does that mean she doesn’t like you?”

“Everyone has to make coin, Phoibe. Just like you earn your keep, just like I work and get paid to…”

Phoibe smashes her fists together. “Bash heads?”

“Right. Well, Zita works, too.”

“Will you marry Zita?”

She snorts at this. “How many women do you know with wives, Phoibe?”

“You could be the first one!”

“The first in the world, I think.”

“Well, the first on Kephallonia.”

“Come here,” she says, and crouches so the girl can climb up onto her back, arms wrapped around Kassandra’s neck. “You have too many ideas, Phoibe. You and Markos both.”

“If you get a wife, can I come and live with you? Even when you aren’t on Kephallonia.”

“And where is it I’m going?”

“I don’t know. I had a dream you went into the sea, and you swam all the way to the other side. I waited for you but you never came back.”

“That doesn’t sound like me. I’d always come back.”

The girl sighs, tightens her grip. "I know."

They walk up the hill into the last of the daylight, squinting, tired, Kassandra's muscles aching as she hoists the girl higher, but this she would not trade for much in this world. Tomorrow they will go down to the water and shoot sharks to sell at the docks. When the sun is too high, they'll sleep under the trees in the vineyard with fruit on their breaths. Phoibe will paint her lips with berry juice. When Markos needs someone to go steal a sword, some nonsense about a bad deal, they'll hide by the cove and spend the afternoon swimming. It can all wait, Kassandra will think. The horizon, the strange pull of her past, the nightmares of lightning. It can wait for another day more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. during: megaris & phokis

 

 

 

 

 

The scent of sickness is strong here: sour, unwashed skin gone sweet and yeasty, old blood and long-ago spilled wine. This was a fine house at one time, but half of it has gone over to ruin, and Kassandra’s hand had found dust and grime where it ran over vases and tiles, wet patches in corners where the roof has not been repaired.

She stares through the dim to the grey light just forming at the window, the first sign of dawn. The woman behind her moans softly in her sleep, shifts and rolls over. Kassandra is careful not to move her as she slips out of the bed, silently collecting her armor. The yard is still. Already the valleys of Megaris are full of smoke from soldiers’ fires, the smell of the battle to come heavy in the air, mingling with the city’s scents: pig shit and the acrid fumes of the tanneries, so strong her stomach turned the first time she’d crested a hill and seen the walls, the stench slapping her in the face even from a distance.

“You thought you would sneak away.”

She turns. Odessa is standing in the door to the house, wiping sleepily at her eyes.

“My business today is urgent.”

“Urgent.” Her tongue plays at the corner of her mouth. “There are whispers that the Spartans intend to flush out the last of the Athenians in battle today. Would you have anything to do with that?”

Kassandra shifts the helmet under her arm, shrugging. “I might.”

“Before you showed up last night, they said Teukros was found dead in a tent outside the city.”

“Interesting.” She shrugs, avoiding her gaze. “It sounds like someone has eliminated the very last of your problems.”

“Did that someone spend the evening in my bed?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

But Odessa is stepping barefoot across the yard, looking her in the eye. “So what was your intent this morning? To leave quietly and never speak to me again?”

“It seemed better than trying to explain why I won’t be returning.”

“You’re leaving Megaris.”

“When the battle is over, yes.” She gives her a look. “Did you expect me to stay?”

“No. But I would’ve appreciated the opportunity to thank you.”

“There is nothing to thank me for, Odessa.” Kassandra pauses, seeing the way the woman’s face twists with what she imagines is slight insult. She’d thought her spoiled the first time they’d met, and there is still some layer of a privileged childhood to her veneer, but beneath the surface is an undercurrent of fury Kassandra thinks is righteous in its own way, something complicated and calculating. Enough that she sympathized with her cause, and helped solve her very particular issues. Enough that it felt half-personal when she took the life of the man known as Teukros the Vindictive, and wiped his blood from her blade under the stars before walking back to the farmhouse. She’d already laid with Odessa two nights before, surprised at her ferocity; yesterday, she’d woken up with deep gouges down her back, a bruise on her neck where the other woman had dug her teeth in as if she’d intended to open it. Kassandra had stumbled into the daylight with no reason to return, their peace settled when she’d left, but she had spent the day killing, aware she’d spend the next day doing the same, and all she wanted was a distraction.

“Don’t insult me, _misthios._ ”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“I hope you aren’t expecting me to weep at your departure.” Odessa’s arms fold at her chest. “I’ve had enough of suitors. Truly, I am as done as anyone could be with someone throwing themselves at my feet, liar or not.”

Kassandra blushes awkwardly. “Oh, no. I’m grateful for the companionship, but I...I have no intention of…”

Odessa rolls her eyes, a quick flutter of laughter following. “I know. Did you think I was serious? I had no illusions as to what this is.”

She looks at her, a slight but raging spark of a woman dwarfed by a crumbling farmhouse that now rests in her hands, the wall of a city that has been methodically turned on her, and sighs. “I have a ship.”

“You said as much before.”

“If you need passage--”

“Don’t say that because you pity me. Don’t.”

“I don’t pity you. You’re a venerable fighter in your own right. I could use someone like you for however long you join us, and then when you find something worthwhile, you are welcome to go your own way.” She pauses. “You don’t want to be Penelope. Not when you could be Odysseus.”

There is a long and heavy silence, punctured only by the scream of gulls. Finally, Odessa cocks her head, eyes narrowed, and nods. “The city already thinks I am a mad little _kuna_. Might as well give them what they expect by running off again.”

 

 

Barnabas only raises an eyebrow when Kassandra explains Odessa's recruitment. Once he discovers the heir to a great legend is in their midst, he'd much rather spend hours discussing the heroic deeds of Odysseus, and make knowing references to some latent power that may be waiting in Odessa's very blood. Kassandra watches them through the flames of the lamps that hang from the ship, sees Odessa's smirk, clearly flattered by Barnabas' enthusiasm. Odessa catches her eye, only for a moment, her smirk changing, the meaning twisting to something clear and recognizable, an invitation Kassandra knows well, and then her attention is back on the old man who speaks so highly of her ancestors. It goes on like this for a few nights, these glances and sudden shifts in grins, lips spreading to bare teeth, tips of tongues, all of it loaded with meaning.

On the journey to Phokis, there is one more encounter, and they both know it will be the last.

Odessa pushes back Kassandra's hair, slicked to her forehead from perspiration, and rolls her eyes. Even in the dark of the hold of the ship, Kassandra can see Odessa's expression, distant and slightly bored. "I do hope you find someone else," she says. "We are no match, you and I."

"I didn't say we were." Kassandra is unsure why she feels somewhat wounded by this; she hopes it doesn't show. "I thought you wanted this."

"Oh, I do. I did." Odessa has pulled her _chiton_ back down, smoothing it into place. She straightens Kassandra's armor for her. "But you're very..." She gives her a look. " _Intense_. You make it seem as though you care."

"Most women like that I am intense. And I..." She's not quite sure what to say to that. "I do care. Would you rather I don't care?"

"I'm not looking for a pantomime of love, Kassandra. I enjoy your talents. I'm just not interested in a romance. Remember what I said in Megaris? No more suitors for Odessa."

"I wasn't--"

"I know, I know." The wood squeaks above them, the steps of the sailors on early morning patrol. "Poor Kassandra. I'd only be wasting your time." She leans forward, giving her a kiss that will be their very last. "You crave love, whether you know it or not." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is aware that the wound is deep. Two sets of hands, her own and Daphnae’s, are pressed over the place where the tusk of the boar had grazed her, only to be pierced again by a hunter’s blade not an hour later. The other woman is gently cleaning the ripped skin, a poultice laid for stopping the blood flow, a wad of herbs under Kassandra’s tongue to dull the sting.

“I’d prefer not to die here,” she says, grinning to hide the wince when the pain hits particularly hard. Daphnae gives her a look, her eye winking in the red dusk.

“And what is wrong with ‘here’, _misthios_? You’d die in a sacred grove in the shadow of the Temple of Artemis. Most would consider it a privilege.” Daphnae wipes the blood from her forehead. “From the boar?”

“From your sisters.”

A frown. “You killed them.”

Kassandra rolls her eyes, groaning. “They were trying to kill _me_. I thought returning with that pelt would at least earn their respect. Instead I was ambushed on the trail.”

“You’re on our lands.” Daphnae seems unbothered by this, though there is still a hint of trouble in her glance. “It’s our law.”

“I thought the law of your goddess was concerned with the hunt. Hunting for beasts, not infatuated warriors.”

“I think you’re forgetting Aktaion.” Daphnae pauses, meeting Kassandra’s gaze. The tiniest smirk plays at her lips. “Infatuated?”

She’s turning red, but she still grins crookedly. “You should have known by now I am not a very good hunter.”

“Yet a magnificent pelt lies at your feet, and there are two tusks in front of the altar of Artemis.”

“I was motivated.”

“By the glory of the hunt?”

“No, Daphnae.”

“A different prize, then.” Daphnae’s eyes are on Kassandra’s wound, but she’s clearly smiling to herself. She hums as she works.

“That’s not against your laws, is it?”

A look from the other woman. “I’m sure you’ve heard tales.”

“Of the kind your goddess favors?” She’s sure she looks cockier than she feels, what with the blood not yet stemmed. “Everyone knows of Artemis and Kallisto.”

Daphnae’s smile fades. “That is a tragedy. Kallisto betrayed Artemis.”

Kassandra cannot help but scoff at this, holding back the urge to move enough to shift the bandages over her wound. “Kallisto was raped by Zeus, then turned on by Hera when Artemis sent her away. That’s not betrayal, Daphnae.”

“The bear-mother had broken her vows and forgotten her duty. She should have chosen death before bearing his sons.”

“We have different ideas about duty.”

“You take lives for drachmae. Your sense of duty shifts with coin, not your heart.”

Kassandra inhales sharply, turns to face the sky instead of the woman’s face. She knows what she’ll see in those features, lit red and pink from the last shock of the sun’s rays, lit as though engulfed by flames. “I do not take every job that crosses my path.”

“How do you know which men deserve to die, then?”

“Sometimes I don’t know until I look them in the eye.”

It seems the other woman has nothing to say to this. She works in silence as the light fades, and the twilight drops its cool gaze on them both. Kassandra watches the stars, mapping their shapes with her eyes to keep her focus from the pain in her side. At some point, Daphnae finishes, and Kassandra looks down to see her torso is completely wrapped.

“You’ll have to stay here.” Daphnae’s voice is quieter now, her touch softer, as if she can recognize the tension in the other woman. “You are not strong enough to leave tonight.”

She grunts, sitting up. “I am expected back in Delphi.”

“You won’t make it over the mountain.” Daphnae’s hands are at her shoulders, helping her to her feet. “I will take you back when you are well enough. Come inside.”

It is clear there will be no arguing with this woman. “Fine.”

When Daphnae lays her down on the floor of the temple, it is in her own bedroll, their weapons mingled together at their feet. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” she says, crouched beside her. “There is nothing wrong with what you do.”

“I find ways to be honorable, but sometimes the worst outcomes are unavoidable.” She looks her in the eye. “You’re lucky. There is a purity to your life. Follow the laws of your goddess, fulfill your pledge. It’s simple. No room for misinterpretation, no room for a mess.”

“Yes. No room.” Daphnae’s expression is strange as she gathers her quiver, and Kassandra finds herself falling asleep. When she opens her eyes again, she is alone in the temple, moonlight collecting in the pools of her armor.

 

 

The gamey taste of venison mixes with the fire’s smoke in her nostrils. What remains of the deer carcass has been hung outside the temple, and Daphnae has been slowly dressing it, leaving certain parts on the altar inside. Kassandra watches from her spot on the floor, eating what is cooked and handed to her, washed down with water-thinned wine.

“I was conceived on the hunt. My father thought my mother was a nymph when he came across her, bathing in the spring with her sisters. She wanted him, and he wanted her. When it was done, he already had a wife and two children in Athens, so that was that. He never came back. When I was born, I was promised to Artemis so that my father’s house could find favor with her. My mother raised me in Lalaia, and gave me to the goddess when the time came.”

She chews carefully, watching the other woman’s back as she works. The huntress is difficult to read. “So you didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course I did. I would have pledged myself regardless of what my mother had decided.” Daphnae is frowning in concentration as she works, but at this she smiles. “She came to me when I was a girl.”

“Artemis?”

“They have always said she walked Lalaia in the guise of a huntress. If you’ve ever seen my home, you’d know why.”

“I’ve been,” Kassandra says, smirking a little at the memory. “It’s a beautiful village, and the _women_.” She winks. “I know how your father felt.”

“So it was that the goddess gave it her favor.”

“What was it like when you saw her?”

“I saw her in Lalaia through the boughs of flowering trees. It was spring. I’d followed her because her bow was made of a bright white wood, and I wanted to know if she’d made it. I thought she was a huntress, but then I looked at her, and her face was so radiant that I thought I would go blind. She placed her hand on my shoulder, and called me by my name. Then she smiled and walked away. When the leaves began to fall, I pledged myself to her Daughters.”

“So a goddess touched you.”

Daphnae taps at her right shoulder. “Just here. And this arm has had a true shot ever since.” She pauses to wipe her blade on her lap. “What of your origins, _misthios_?”

“Sparta.”

Daphnae snorts knowingly. “I saw your muscles and thought as much.”

“But I came of age on Kephallonia.”

“Kephallonia? That is a far-flung place. How did you ever end up there?”

She shrugs. There are many answers to this question, some she is still learning for herself. “Bad luck.”

“There is no such thing.” Daphnae seems to be finished with the carcass, cleaning her things. “Whatever you are, wherever you’ve been, the gods have seen to your fate.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I think I’d prefer if you were wrong.”

“You don’t think this life we are set upon like a path is a gift?”

She can’t help but be honest. “I’ve seen things that make me question it.”

“So have I.”

“And still you believe.”

“Still I believe.” Daphnae’s hand is cool on her cheek, smelling faintly of iron and beast. “I know when the gods have sent something good my way.”

 

 

 

She couldn’t ever stay here. She knows this, but the moon always seems to be full above the temple, and the sunsets seem to last for hours and hours, and Daphnae’s features are always lit pink and gold on her bronze skin, a statue, an idol, and Kassandra strokes the outline of her face when she sleeps beside her, presses her nose into her hair to smell the forest, the cold air of mountains, the gaminess of fur and claw and a sweetness like a spring.

Daphnae smirks in her sleep, curls her body closer. Outside, a deer watches from the trees, paws at the ground, lifts its head to hold the moon in its antlers, and then steps into shadow again.

 

 

 

“Will you return with the other pelts?”

“I’ll do my best.”

The lights of Delphi glow on the ridge beneath them. Daphnae can go no further, but it’s a mild walk down the road for Kassandra now, and she feels well enough for the journey. Daphnae’s hand lingers on Kassandra’s arm.

“I would like to see more of you.”

Kassandra studies the huntress’ features, the strange and sudden openness of them. Like a hind stepping before the path of an arrow. “I’ll try. I make no promises, Daphnae.”

“Not even for someone who saved your life?”

She pauses, hoping the conflict inside her is not apparent in her expression. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Daphnae leans in, kisses her gently on the cheek, just beside her mouth. “But we will meet again. The goddess brought you here, and she will bring you back again."

Kassandra does not have the heart to tell her, even now, that such things seem impossible in her mind. But she nods, lifting a hand. "Good hunting, Daphnae."

"Safe travels, _misthios_.”

When she walks through the gates of Delphi, the moon reigns high in the ceiling of the earth. She drinks with Barnabas, stumbles through the streets on his shoulder, their laughter ringing even as she finds her way into the room of Auxesia, pulled through the door by her knowing hand. But is that a figure outlined by the moon she sees on the mountain? Perhaps a tree, she thinks, too drunk to know, none the wiser, sure to forget by the time she wakes to the dawn and is dragged home by Barnabas and a few of her crew, chuckling and ribbing her the whole way back to the ship.

But it is the armor of Artemis she will pull on, and the bow of Artemis she will wield, and when the next beast falls under her hand, it’s the feeling of Daphnae, slick under her hand, that she will remember when she relieves the animal of its pelt, and adds it to the stack of bundles on the Adrestia.

“I suppose we will need to turn in the direction of Phokis soon,” Barnabas will say when she returns with some other legendary pair of antlers or lion’s teeth, but she shakes her head, always the same.

“Not yet.”

“So that woman you met in the hills, the one who saved your life, she isn’t expecting you?”

“I’ll return when it’s done.”

“And what is it she’s promised you when it’s done? It must be a mighty prize to have you completing tasks like Heracles.” That knowing look, the gentle wink. She rolls her eyes, smirks when she comes up from the hold.

“I just enjoy the hunt.”

“Oh, that was never in question.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. during: attika & argolis & korinthia & keos

 

 

 

 

 

 

Athens is overwhelming, dizzying. Kassandra doesn’t think she likes it. What she remembers best of her childhood in Sparta is the grove where she walked barefoot, trees that obscured the sun and warm ground for tumbling and racing. The rest of her life has been hot sand, the bright blue water of the island, the bare rock behind Markos’ estate where she’d climb and see no one for hours. Now she wades through a sea of people and buildings, the looming acropolis and the head of Athena always on watch. There is nowhere to hide, nowhere to remain unseen for long. She climbs roofs and finds children, picking at the tiles. Dips into alleys where ragged women sleep and men piss into puddles. There is no escape. It could suffocate you if you weren’t careful.

If not for Phoibe, she doesn’t know if she’d stay long enough to complete what she came for. The longer she is here, the more she wants to leave.

And it only bothers her for a moment, that when she meets Aspasia in the house of Perikles, that she feels something in the way the other woman holds her gaze. The intensity of her frown even when she touches the back of Kassandra’s hand, briefly, so quickly it could have been a breath rather than skin. The woman is like a pillar of fire she wants to stand near, to catch sparks in her mouth. 

“Everyone is in love with Aspasia,” Phoibe says, lying on her back on the roof. They are in the house Kassandra has been given to sleep in while she is here, a drab building in the south of the city, not far from the workshops of craftsmen so that there is always a faint layer of marble dust and the scent of clay on her things. 

“She’s impressive.”

Phoibe looks over at her, sticking her bony elbow into Kassandra’s arm. “Are you in love with her, too?”

“No, Phoibe.” She rolls her eyes, laughs and pulls on the girl’s shoulder, drawing her into her side. “You think I’m in love with every woman I meet.”

“Usually you are.”

“You sound so certain.” Not that she isn’t entirely wrong, of course. “And what do you know of love, little satyr?”

“I know things!”

“Alright, alright. You are more knowledgeable than Aphrodite.” She sighs, folds her hands behind her head. Traces the shapes of the stars above them, occasionally obscured by a thin layer of clouds. “I really missed you, Phoibe.”

“I missed you, too.”

“Tell me about Kephallonia.”

“Markos’ first wine crop was not very good. He thinks it’s delicious, but he doesn’t care what wine tastes like.”

“As long as he gets drunk.”

“Of course. And there is a new roof on the temple in Sami, but it won’t be finished for a while. Sami is the same.” Phoibe pauses, long enough for Kassandra to glance over at her. “Zita is not there anymore.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. One day, they said she got on a ship. Left.”

Kassandra frowns. She is remembering the face of Aphrodite looking down at her, soft flesh at her cheek. “Was she in trouble?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe she got sick of Kephallonia and had to go.”

“Is that what you did?”

“I don’t mind Kephallonia.” Phoibe smiles to herself. “I think one day when we are both rich, we should go back and build a palace. We can own the whole island.”

“And where will you get all that money from?”

“Being a  _ misthios _ , like you. Or doing favors for Aspasia. She says I have a future in this.”

“In what?”

“Being trusted.”

“Be careful doing favors for powerful people, Phoibe.” She tries to give a look that conveys seriousness. “They aren’t always looking out for you.”

“I look after myself.”

“I know.” A single star winks and shoots across the sky. “But you should still be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Does Markos know you’re here?”

“He said it would be good for me. I’m as old as you were when you started training.”

“ _ Malaka _ ,” she groans, wishing she could get her hands around his neck. “But that was on Kephallonia. There’s a war here, Phoibe. It’s not safe.”

“I’m not going back.”

“I won’t carry you to Kephallonia myself, but I’ll pay someone who will.”

“Then I’ll just run back here when they’re not looking.” Phoibe’s brow furrows. “I’m working for Aspasia now. She won’t let anything happen to me. She promised.”

“No one can promise anything in a time like this.”

“Don’t worry about me, Kassandra.” The girl grins like she always has, a bit of Markos in her, a bit of Kassandra, too. “Now you tell me where  _ you’ve _ been. Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Not all of it, but something." There is still awe to even speaking the words aloud. "My family is alive, Phoibe.”

“Really?” Phoibe rolls over to look at her, eyes wide. “But I thought you were an orphan, like me.”

“I’m still half an orphan, growing up like I did. My mother is alive, and my brother...my brother is alive.” She swallows. “But he is not himself. I don’t think he will ever be my real brother again.” 

“Then I’ll be your sister.”

She looks at her, the sudden conviction in the girl’s eyes, her determined smirk. “My sister?”

“If you’ve lost a brother, I’ll take his place as your sister. How about that?”

“You’ve always been my sister, Phoibe.”

“Really?”

“Always.” She pulls her in for an embrace, feels the girl wiggle as she hugs back. She’s stronger than she used to be - Markos has probably seen to that. “I thought you knew.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

You could drown in the gaudy sweetness of Korinthia; the heady scent of blossoms and perfume, the sound of women singing from every quarter, the cheap wine that flows through the Porneion. Petals cling to the soles of her boots, hiding old bloodstains. On the corners, soft hands pull at her armor, drawing her inside, inside, come inside,  _ misthios _ , but she shakes her head, asks for information first. Then allows herself to fall onto one pillow after another, because coin has been good and the road has been long and Argolis was lonely, so lonely, just sickness and death and --

The infant screaming, the hot lick of flames on her skin.

The woman beside her yelps quietly when she sits up, jolted awake. A palm covers her face, wiping at cold sweat.

“You were making noises in your sleep,” the woman says, who called herself Ariadne and has dark ringlets that look violet now in the flickering light. 

“I’m sorry.” Kassandra pants, still catching her breath. The cries in her mind are fading, but her palms still feel warm. She presses them to her face. 

“Don’t apologize, sweet,” Ariadne pulls her back down onto the pillow, stroking her neck and chest. Coaxes Kassandra’s hands away from her eyes, pressing them to her own breasts. “Feel this,” Ariadne whispers, closes Kassandra’s fingers over her nipples. “Hold me here.”

“I…”

“Do you feel my heart beneath your hand?”

“Yes,” she whispers, lets her mouth drift down to the woman’s ear. 

“It beats like a drum, see? Count it until you fall asleep again.”

When she wakes again, the sun is high, late in the morning, nearly noon, and there is lyre music coming from the other room. Where the woman Ariadne slept is bare, only rumpled cloth, but there are two other women with her now, one with grapes cradled in the lap of her  _ chiton,  _ the other rubbing perfume into her skin.

“Hello,  _ misthios _ ,” the woman with grapes says, leaning in to push Kassandra’s hair from her face. Her eyes are green as coves. “Are you hungry?”

“Always.”

“Eat this.” The obscenely soft flesh of apricot is at her lips, held in the woman’s hand. In her other now, the fruit’s stone, balanced between her fingers. Kassandra bites, taking it into her teeth, and chewing. Juice runs down her chin, and the other woman cleans it with her tongue. When she pulls her face away, she is smiling. “You are the Eagle-Bearer.”

“You’ve heard of me.”

“Most of Korinthia has. They say you protect women and children.”

“I do my best.”

“You’re a favorite here.” She uses her thumb to catch the last juice on the edge of Kassandra’s lip, smirks. “I hope you stay a while. We could use someone like you.”

 

 

 

“I looked for Zita,” Phoibe says. Her legs swing as she eats her apple. “I thought she might be here.”

“It was a good idea.” Kassandra leans in to her side, knocks her playfully. “She would have loved Korinthia.”

“She’s not here, though. I couldn’t find her.”

“I know.” She takes the piece of apple Phoibe hands her, dangles it for Ikaros. He ignores her, and she grins at him, lets him take off for a hunt. They watch him fly, disappearing on the dusky horizon, violet and gold on the roofs of Korinthia. “I looked, too.”

“You should come back and visit me in Athens. You know, when we’re done with our missions.”

“ _ Our _ missions?”

“Well, I have work and you have work.” The girl shrugs, chewing thoughtfully. “Business brought us both to Korinthia.”

Kassandra nearly laughs at that, the girl’s seriousness. “Business? And what do you get for your work? Remember what I said about favors, Phoibe.”

“Aspasia gave me my own room. Bigger than the one I had on Kephallonia, and with my own servant.” Phoibe beams. “She said I earned it.”

“I’m sure you did.” 

“Are you proud of me?”

“Of course I’m proud of you. You did good today, Phoibe, just like every day.” She lifts the girl with one arm, Phoibe laughing in a way that shows her true age, no matter how much of a small businesswoman she’d like to pretend at. Phoibe climbs onto her back, wraps her arms tight around her neck like old times, and Kassandra carries her back to the noble house where Aspasia has arranged for Phoibe to stay, the girl telling jokes the whole way.

When she sets her down, Kassandra musses her hair. “And you promise you’ll stay out of trouble.”

“You said no one can make promises in times like these.”

“That’s everybody else. You and me are different. We can promise each other anything.”

“Alright,” Phoibe says, a hand on her heart. “I promise to stay out of trouble. Do  _ you  _ promise to stay out of trouble?”

Kassandra laughs. “Trouble is how I make my drachmae.”

The servant lets her into the courtyard, nodding at them both. Phoibe points to Kassandra, grinning up at the man.

“That’s my sister,” she says. “She’s the greatest  _ misthios _ in Greece.”

“Not the greatest,” Kassandra says, but Phoibe’s waving, disappearing behind the door, and Kassandra finds herself smiling all the way back to the perfumed pillow where a girl named Phaidra has promised a bowl of fresh figs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_ Malaka.  _ There is sand in everything she owns. Xenia laughs when Kassandra takes off her boots, shaking them out onto the steps of the temple. She has only just arrived, making her inquiries, hearing what she needed to hear, but it seems she has been swallowed by the island itself from the state of her armor.

“The white sand of Keos is supposed to be sacred to pirates. I keep a pouch of it whenever I am on the sea.” The woman’s toothy grin changes, her gaze shifting to the bright blue water far beneath them. “Phoenix had a pouch of it, too. I wonder if she still keeps it with her.”

It is at this moment - this particular curl of Xenia’s lip, her eyes softening in a way that is immediately familiar to Kassandra - that she realizes something. 

“You didn’t tell me you  _ knew _ my mother.”

“I just did.”

“You know what I mean. You  _ knew _ her.”

The pirate chuckles, her tongue caught between her teeth. “Ah, that is true. I was not...specific. And you did not ask.”

“I don’t know why I would.”

Xenia’s still grinning, her cheeks flush. She gestures to the white hill behind them, brilliant in the cloudless sun. “You’ve traveled a long way,  _ misthios _ . Come with me.”

 

 

 

“They were very happy times.” 

Kassandra takes the wine Xenia offers, the pirate’s outstretched hand scarred along the knuckles. The sun is not so high now, their shadows long on the sandy outcropping. “So it was good, then. The life she had here.”

“I had a great admiration for your mother. I really thought…” A pause. “Well, I believed she felt the same about me. Impossible as it ever was to know Phoenix's feelings.”

“Did you know she was going to leave?”

“No. I had no idea. I wanted her to stay. I told her Keos would always be her home, that she had made something here with me and it was worth keeping. But that was Phoenix. So focused on never turning back that she thought even standing still would doom her. Better to keep pushing to something else, something new.” Xenia drops a wide and heavy hand onto her shoulder. “You will be quite a shock to her. Perhaps she’ll linger for once.”

“Unless I am another thing she’d rather have left behind.”

“Phoenix is…” Xenia frowns at the horizon, rubs the back of her neck. Her muscles there are impressive. “Determined. When she sets her mind to something, she sees it through. When something upsets her plan, she might take a while to come around to it, to see where it fits in her life.” A knowing look from the other woman. “Don’t be surprised if she isn’t quite sure what to do with you at first. It has nothing to do with love or loyalty. She takes a while to come around, but she will always come around. Do you understand?”

“Did she…” It feels foolish to ask this question, but she asks regardless. “Did she ever mention me, or my brother?”

An awkward look from the other woman. “She never spoke of the past. Only that there was a deep pain, and she did not want to revisit it.”

“I understand.” She shrugs. “Sometimes I feel the same way.”

“So it’s your mother you see next?”

Kassandra shakes her head. “Back to Athens first.”

“Bad tides from Athens. A ship of the dead flying an owl’s banner was found in the sea a few days ago. The crew were wasted away with some kind of disease. They burned it all, took no cargo.” Xenia nods to her. “Be careful, Eagle-Bearer. You may be better avoiding the city.”

“I have to go back. Someone I love is there.”

“A woman,” Xenia says, giving her a look. “I understand.”

“No, my sister.”

“Interesting.” A frown of inquiry. “I didn’t know Phoenix had another daughter.”

“We share no blood, but she is my sister regardless.”

“I see.” The woman gets to her feet, stretches. Smiles down at Kassandra. “I am a pirate, _misthios_. I understand better than most that chosen family is often the strongest family of all.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. during: athens & naxos

 

 

 

 

 

Athens is ash and disease. One could mistake it for the realm of Hades risen up, full of the cries of the tortured, the miserable, the damned. Lines of people trying to escape are held up at the walls, dying where they stand when fire takes them, or the inevitable sickness, or the blade of a crazed follower of Ares, determined to cleanse the city. Every port they stopped in had warned them - stay far from Athens if you can, for the gods have turned their backs on the place. Death is all that waits there. But Kassandra would look at Barnabas, see his hesitant nod, and so they'd journeyed on, until the gates of the city rose up before them, crowned by vultures.

She makes herself forget, but some things stick like tar:

Perikles’ bloody mouth, gaping as his throat opened, his teeth washed pink, his last breath wet and bubbling.

Bone-thin dogs fighting over the corpses of children, tugging on limbs until they ripped, carrying off arms and legs to choke on in the shadows.

A mother crouched in a burnt-out hovel, holding up her infant, shoving the swaddled child into Kassandra’s hands. “ _Misthios_ ,” she’d cried. “Eagle-Bearer! Take her from here! Take my daughter with you.” It wasn’t until she’d run further down the alley that she’d lifted the cloth; the babe’s face was grey, her lips blue. The body of the child still and cold. Kassandra covered her again, then hid her in an abandoned house, high enough she would not be eaten by animals.

The acrid smell of burning flesh, hair, the last filth expelled from those who had expired and been dragged into piles to set to flame.

Phoibe.

The sounds of the dying, and those who grieved them, and those who would follow them shortly.

But Phoibe. Always Phoibe.

 

 

 

She hates herself for leaving her behind. For not having enough time, enough strength. She should have carried her in her arms. She should have taken her high on the hill above the city and found a place to honor her, away from the horrors, away from everything that had doomed them.

Of course there had been no time. Of course she’d had to race from the city to outlive it herself.

But still, Kassandra thinks. Still.

If she had taken Phoibe’s body, she could have buried her properly. Sent her to Elysium where she belonged, where her place was deserved. But now she had no coin for the ferry, and Phoibe would stand at the banks of the Styx forever, waiting, begging Charon to let her cross.

Kassandra vows that when her time comes, she will not go to the underworld with a single drachmae. She will stay on the banks with Phoibe so that she is never alone again, or she will hoist the girl onto her shoulders just as she always had in life, and carry them both across the river herself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a broken Kassandra that first steps into the house of Myrrine, now called Phoenix, no longer called mother. She thought Naxos would feel like a homecoming, but it is another island, another dock, another place she doesn't quite belong.

The woman looks up, and Kassandra sees that her eyes are the same as in her memory, her face only slightly aged, but all of her harder, more intense. Was she always this woman of stone, this insurmountable wall? The first emotion in Kassandra’s gut is not relief, not love, but apprehension. Myrrine stares at her as if she expects something from her, and Kassandra cannot imagine now what she ever thought she had to offer.

“ _Mater_ ,” she whispers.

Myrrine stares at Kassandra as if she is a ghost. For the first time since she folded Phoibe’s lifeless hands, she thinks someone is finally seeing the truth.

 

 

 

In Myrrine’s presence, she feels the armor of the Eagle-Bearer falling away. Now she is just Kassandra, a girl learning to fight in the woods of Sparta, wanting her mother to be impressed, to be proud, to love her. They have embraced only once since she arrived on these shores, and it was a strange gesture, Myrrine’s expression strained when she pulled away. Sometimes it seems like she can’t look Kassandra in the eye. Other times her gaze is so intense that Kassandra has to turn away, pretend at distraction.

“I have made a life in a world where you and your brother do not exist,” Myrrine says once, as if that explains it. Kassandra looks over at her, doesn’t know what to think of the way her mother stares at the horizon as if she means to pierce it open.

“But now you know that we do exist.” Kassandra’s voice is quiet, careful.

“Yes, that is true.” Myrrine folds her arms across her chest. “Thank the gods I trained you young, or you might not be here at all.”

There is a long pause, Kassandra waiting for her mother to say something else, for anything. Finally, it’s her own heart that betrays her, and she says something that feels naive.

“I never thought I would see you again.” She chews her bottom lip, a child’s gesture.

“Well, here I am.”

One of her mother’s lieutenants is behind them now, clearing her throat.

“Phoenix,” the woman says.

“I’m coming.” Myrrine’s hand falls on Kassandra’s arm, awkward and too light of a touch. “You have much to do on Paros. I won’t take up more of your time.”

“You’re not taking up my time. I’m...I’m glad for any time I have with you.”

Myrrine looks at her, her brow furrowing as if there is more to say, as if it cannot be spoken out loud, and then she smiles, perhaps sadly, perhaps reluctantly.

 

 

 

The late afternoon light is clear, bright and warm and perfect when she leads Phobos up to the house of Phoenix. Her mother is in the courtyard, a map spread out on the table, her lieutenants gathered around it. Kassandra pulls the horse forward, pats its nose. “I thought we could ride to the end of the island together.”

Myrrine’s frown does not dissipate. Instead, her nose crinkles. “You said you would go to Paros.”

She’s thrown by this, struggling for an answer. “Well, I...I will. Barnabas is ready to leave in the morning. But in the meantime, there is something I wish to do for Phoibe. I wasn’t able to give her a proper burial, so I thought--”

“Phoibe?”

“I told you about Phoibe.”

Myrrine looks up from the map, seems to finally consider her. “Oh, the girl, of course.”

“I thought you could come with me.”

The older woman’s frown returns. Kassandra is sure her own features pull into a similar look when she is frustrated. “Time is precious, Kassandra. I asked you to do those things because they are important, not because they are optional.”

“I’m not ignoring what you asked of me.”

“But you have not done it.”

“I’m sorry.” She feels her face getting hot, knows tears are forming. She hates it. “Tomorrow, I promise.”

Her mother’s face is stony. “Kassandra, I don’t--”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry.” She shrugs, nods. All of her on the verge of shaking, terrified of crying, more terrified of pushing this woman away. She leaves before anything else can be said between them, and rides to the highest point on the island. Lights a fire for Phoibe, leaves one of Ikaros’ feathers. It is not enough, and she knows this, but it is all she can do.

When she comes down the mountain, Myrrine is still deliberating with the Spartan leaders, and Kassandra passes by her room, looks in. Her mother looks up, saying nothing, and Kassandra leaves. Not today, she thinks. And not tonight either.

 

 

 

It’s Aspasia who finds her on the balcony, the other woman sliding up beside her, their elbows only a finger’s length apart. Until now, there has been a massive distance to this woman; on the ship, she took her meals alone and in silence, spoke only to Herodotus and only a few words a day. Kassandra had watched her from afar just as she had since the day they met, looking for a crack in that sheen. All these hard women in her life now. Her mother was a rock - Aspasia was steel. Something in Kassandra had wanted to bleed along her edge the first time she’d seen her. Now she is shocked to see no sharpness here.

“I’m sorry about Phoibe,” Aspasia says, her voice warm and quiet, unlike no tone Kassandra has heard before. “She was a good girl. Loyal and smart, more capable than the rest.” Aspasia’s eyes are on her. “I think she took after you that way.”

Kassandra swallows. “She deserved better.”

“Yes, she did.” The woman watches her, and Kassandra feels bare before her. “You were right, what you said to me in Athens. It was my fault that she died.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“You did.” She pauses. “But you weren’t wrong. I am responsible for Phoibe’s death.”

“Many of us are.” Kassandra wipes at her eye with the back of her hand, frowning. “You don’t need to comfort me.”

The woman’s expression is strange, unreadable. Her arm slides across the balcony, presses against Kassandra’s. “I'm aware of that.”

“What happened to Perikles...you shouldn’t have had to see that.”

“Athens was witness to worse horrors. To be with a great man is to prepare yourself for such ends. I mourn the city as much as I mourn him.”

A bird sings in the twilight. Aspasia reaches across the balcony, plucks a fuschia blossom from the branch that crosses in front of the moon before them. Twirls the blossom between her fingers.

“She shouldn’t treat you like this.”

Kassandra’s mouth is dry. “What?”

“Since we’ve arrived, Myrrine has expected you to be a _misthios_ , not her daughter. Setting you on her tasks, asking too much of you. She won’t pay you for any of it because she expects you to do it regardless.” Her voice is low. “You deserve better, too, Kassandra.”

“She’s...she’s my mother.”

“And she is a stranger to you. You trust so easily, Eagle-Bearer. You should be more careful with your heart. It is more precious than you think.”

Aspasia’s fingers circle Kassandra’s wrist, tighten, and she looks at her with a meaning that is not lost on Kassandra, not for a second. Then she releases her, walks back into the house. Her feet make no noise. Kassandra presses a palm to her own chest, aware she is breathing much harder.

 

 

 

A mist rolls in from the sea, obscuring the stars. She doesn’t know what it is that wakes her, her dreams dim and grey and riddled with monotonous suffering, but when she opens her eyes there is the outline of a figure standing in her doorway, the curtain pushed behind them. She sits up, squinting in the darkness, and someone kneels next to her, a hand grasping her palm.

Aspasia takes Kassandra’s fingers and wraps them around her own throat.

“Take me,” she whispers, and presses down.

Kassandra hesitates, suddenly so aware of the other woman whose face is now near to her own, her breath, her scent: not the musky perfume of wealthy ladies, not what she had expected, but citrus and wood and spice and…

She inhales. Aspasia’s lips brush her mouth. Orchid, she realizes. She smells like orchids.

“Are you sure you--”

But the other woman is straddling her now, the heat of her pressed to Kassandra’s bare torso, and nails dig sharp in her shoulder. “Yes,” Aspasia says. “Now.” It is an instruction, said with all the authority of the woman who ran an entire city.

Kassandra obeys. They fuck quickly, almost silently, against the wall of her room. It is rough, tense, every motion taut and overly physical as if she is trying to force the pain out of herself, as if this is a ritual meant to cleanse them both of everything they left in Athens. Aspasia writhes against her, one leg wrapped around Kassandra’s waist. Claws at her back to hold herself in place. When she finishes, she collapses slightly in Kassandra’s arms, panting, trembling, then slips out from under her, stepping away. Leaves the room, dropping the curtains back into place as if nothing has happened.

As she falls back onto her bed, Kassandra feels blood running down her spine. In the morning, there are dark streaks where she’s slept, left from the gouges Aspasia made in her flesh. On the pillow next to her, the fuschia blossom, its petals beginning to curl and darken.

 

 

 

They do not speak again. There is a faint bruise forming around Aspasia’s neck in the morning, easily visible when she stands at the table of Myrrine and her lieutenants, discussing the movement of Silanos' men. Kassandra looks at her from across the courtyard, stands and waits to see if she will make eye contact. Aspasia glances up only once, giving away nothing, and then returns to the conversation. Kassandra licks some of what remains of the other woman from the corner of her mouth, and then walks down to the docks.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. during: mykonos

 

 

 

 

 

Silanos dies at sea, his corpse tossed to sharks. Kassandra watches the blossom of red form where they pick at him, gnawing like starved hounds at his body, the water churned bright pink by their frenzy, the same hue as fuchsia petals stirred in white foam.

Myrrine finally seems pleased, smirking down at what remains of the man. “This is more than he deserves, the bastard.” She looks over at her daughter. “Well done, lamb.”

Kassandra only nods, unable to form even a smile. The word has no impact on her, the old name, the pet name. She stares as the sharks rip a hole in his side, entrails spitting out into the water to float in a tangled wad. They drag him down, out of sight, leaving only the cloud of his blood.

She feels nothing.

They turn the ship back to Naxos. The lieutenants say there will be a celebration in the harbor, and while exhausted, their number down by two, she sees the relief in her crew’s faces, always grateful for wine and rest, even for a night.

Barnabas drops his hand on her shoulder. “There is still the notice from Mykonos,” he says, his voice soft, leaning in so that only she can hear him. “Say the word, captain, and we will leave for the Silver Islands.”

“Is it far?”

“Not as far as Thera.” He winks at her, a fatherly gesture. “You could use a rebellion, Kassandra. It would be a good distraction for you.”

 

 

 

She does not sleep again in the house of Phoenix. She stays on the ship with the crew, folding herself into her old spot under the stars, falling asleep to the drunken songs of the sailors. Before dawn, she climbs the mast to perch atop the sails, watches the first rays of the sun hitting the walls of her mother’s house, the window where Aspasia is likely still sleeping, the courtyard where Myrrine first appeared to her. She wonders if either inquired as to her absence last night; regardless, no one came down to the docks to seek her out, no servants brought messages.

 _You will come home to Sparta,_ Myrrine had said, always another instruction, _but first you will meet your father._

Kassandra thinks that were she to come home, it would be to her house in Kephallonia, to Phoibe on the roof and fresh grapes off the vine. Ikaros perched on the windowsill, cleaning his feathers. The morning sun filtering into her room, the close sounds of the sea, her tunic only dirty from the dust of the yard, her sandals old but yet unworn, a pouch of drachmae enough to put food in her belly and sharpen her sword. That is her home, and it exists now only in dreams.

On the deck below, Barnabas clears his throat, looks up at her with an expectant grin. “We are ready, captain,” he says, shielding his eyes as Helios’ chariot mounts high enough in the sky to blind them. “Mykonos awaits.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

What she expected to find in Mykonos, she does not know. A contract to keep her hands busy, a good place to drink, to sleep undisturbed, perhaps a few women who ask nothing of her but an evening spent in a rush of feeling.

Instead, Kyra’s face appears like some vision in the hazy dim, the torchlight flickering on the wet walls of the cave, that crooked smile, a single eyebrow raised, all of her a question Kassandra aches to answer. The dagger strikes the wood beside her head and she thinks it might as well have caught her in the chest, so skewered her heart feels, split open by an expert blade.

The leader of the rebellion is a woman with a wry grin and a knowing look. Not the broad-shouldered brute she’d expected, not a bearded bandit, a wizened old man, not a former soldier, or a lord’s thwarted son, or a boy pretending at manhood. No, it is a woman, a woman who is beautiful the way a fine and sharp dagger is beautiful, and this same woman seizes her by the wrist, tugs her outside and into the fading light of the early evening.

“Walk with me,” she says, turning them onto the road that runs to the north of the island.

Kassandra needs no convincing. In her chest, a pit like the stone of a fruit turns and turns, buries itself there until she knows she is hopeless, she is smitten. She watches Kyra’s face as if another message will be spelled in her features, as if the message could be drank or eaten, as if Aphrodite had stroked the woman’s lips to make a place for Kassandra’s mouth there.

 

 

 

“You arrived on this island rather late, Eagle-Bearer.”

“Late? You should be lucky I came at all.” She smirks, hands on her hips. Cocks her stance in such a way that it’ll draw the eye of the other woman. Oh, she feels reckless now, a fool for the thump of her own heart. “A damp cave full of reeking drunks and a woman with a dagger, hard to resist. Some contracts at least attempt to offer a reward.”

“I don’t see why you complain when you knew what to expect.” Kyra laughs openly, never unseated. “The notice mentions no such prize.”

She lets her eyes roam so her intent is not missed. “I think I may find one regardless.”

“I said you were late because another answered my notice first.” She gestures towards the camp on the beach beneath them. “It seems Sparta has taken an interest in our little rebellion.”

“Sparta?” Kassandra peers at the red banners, spears plunged in the sand. “When Sparta or Athens come to aid, it’s usually more blood than bounty. There is always another motive.”

“Oh, it wasn’t a surprise. We are called the Silver Islands for a reason. Every nation would like to keep us in their fist. Sparta is only the latest in a long line of those who think we can be tethered for the sake of their coffers.”

“So you are allies.”

“For now. When what we both want no longer aligns, that may change.”

“And what do you want for your islands?”

“Me?” Kyra smiles, eyes widening as though she had not expected this question. Her hand brushes Kassandra’s only for a minute, so quickly it could have been an accident. “I want freedom. The Silver Islands belong to themselves, no one else. If it takes Sparta to secure that freedom, fine, but we will not be anyone’s pet.”

“Then this is what I will offer you with my services.” Kassandra holds out a hand, the standard to seal her pact. “Your freedom.”

Kyra looks at her as though intrigued, even amused, but her expression gives way to something more serious, and she clasps Kassandra’s palm with her fingers. “That may be too much for any one person to promise.”

“You don’t know me well enough, then.”

“You’re right.” Another smirk from Kyra, a smirk that makes every inch of Kassandra twist into a knot. “We must get to know each other better, Eagle-Bearer. For now, I have only the tales of you to go on.”

“I hope I live up to them.”

Kyra looks her over, half-appraisal, half something Kassandra can’t name, though it may well be desire. “I hope so, too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are edges to Kyra, places where she comes to a point and goes rough and dangerous; prisoners are treated strategically, then eliminated when they are of no further use. Traitors are dealt with viciously. The nations and cities of Greece that consider themselves civilized often practice a kind of agreed mercy between soldiers and leaders, generals and lieutenants. Kyra acknowledges no such code. Kassandra sees her ruthless in the face of her oppressors. She has long been under a heel, as have her islands. She will cut off the leg before taking it from their necks.

Kassandra understands. An animal beat, cornered, who has lived its whole life branded and kept on a chain...no one would question its motives when it devoured its captor.

Kyra’s men are proof alone of her strength. Skilled warriors, men with influence, men without power who fight for their families, outcasts and pirates, smiths wielding their own swords, seasoned brawlers taking up a mission that delivers in virtue rather than coin. They admire her, trust her judgments, never question her as they normally would a woman of her low birth. When Kassandra joins their ranks, they only step aside to make room, and remind her that it is Kyra who ties them all together, who truly leads this rebellion. Kassandra marvels at it all, mentions it to Kyra when she has met with the Spartans who quietly toe the line in her presence. Thaletas and his men are still gathered in the cave, mingling now with the other rebels as though it is a natural thing, soldiers brushing shoulders with rabble in some damp hole in the ground. Kassandra nods at Kyra.

“They respect you.”

“Of course they do, I earned their respect.”

“Most men of Greece would not fall so easily under the leadership of an ordinary woman.”

“Mykonos is not most of Greece.” She leans in, her smile wickedly sure of itself. “And I am no ordinary woman.”

Thaletas’ arm is suddenly around Kyra’s shoulders, and he is pulling her closer, and it is only when his lips are pressed to Kyra’s that Kassandra can even comprehend what is happening. He is kissing her, and Kyra is smiling into the kiss, her cheeks flushing red. It is a familiar gesture. They have done it many times before. When he pulls away, he is beaming like a boy. “Yes,” he says, his accent unmistakably that of Spartan nobility. “She is no ordinary woman, my Kyra.”

Kyra’s nose wrinkles as she laughs at him, playfully pushing back. “ _Your_ Kyra?”

He turns to Kassandra. “If you can believe it, _misthios_ , when all this has been resolved, she has agreed to be my wife.”

Kassandra swallows something down, something that is not welcome here at all. Somehow, she remembers to speak, and what it is she might say. “The gods must have brought you together.”

“His _mater_ will hate me,” Kyra says, seeming positively amused about the fact. “His family is one of the finest in all of Sparta, but here he wants to tie his fate to a street scamp from Mykonos and spend his days on the Silver Islands.” She laughs. “I’ve ruined him.”

“Hardly.” Thaletas downs his wine is a single swig. “We will make you a fine lady yet.”

“I’d love to see you try, Spartan.”

Kassandra withdraws, makes excuses that take her back to the Adrestia. Spends the night on the ship until the wine and the songs of her men drop her into an uneasy sleep. Dreams of Kyra in an endless cave, walking deeper and deeper into the heart of the earth, darkness closing in, but Kyra shining like a torch to light their way. When she reaches for her hand, her whole body is set to flame.

 

 

 

Thaletas is the picture of Spartan leadership; strong-jawed, bronze-skinned, fleet-footed, a fitting hero for a fitting cause. It is easy to imagine him cast in marble, hoisting up the head of a monster, triumphantly straddling its remains. He was born for this, raised for it his entire life, and they say the gods themselves intervened when they wrecked his ship, claiming his generals in the sea so he could take the place of polemarch. Already, there is talk that he will be a legend. His men gaze at their commander with identical expressions of adoration. Some seem half in-love with him, jealous when anyone else occupies his time.

He sits between the legs of his lieutenant on the beach, head nodded forward as the other man goes with shears to his dark locks, carefully trimming close to the head in the Spartan style. The fine hair blows into the sand, dusts his shoulders where the lieutenant gently, devoutly caresses it away. She half-expects the man to drop his lips to the back of his neck, so tender are their interactions.

Kassandra studies him as she would a lion strutting before his den, her prize held in his claws, his teeth long and capped in gold. But there are many lion pelts in the hold of the Adrestia, and the bow of Artemis has never feared a beast.

He is courting Kyra the way of Spartan nobles. Kassandra has seen the steady delivery of gifts; pearls on strings, necklaces of amber, a hippo carved from ivory from Egypt. How a man of war has time to assemble such charms is beyond her, but Kyra accepts them all with a smile, a girlish look reserved for him when he shows up at the caves. Kassandra watches from the corners, feeling like a sulking dog, swigging wine or gnawing dry bread to occupy her mouth, careful not to interrupt their conversations. Who is she to interfere, after all? Who is a _misthios_ from a hovel in Kephallonia beside the gleaming pride of Sparta?

But when Kyra looks at her, she feels every knot of her muscles undone. She unravels by the tendon, by fractures of bones, every scar a ribbon, every organ picked out as if with an eagle’s beak. Prometheus went willingly, even graciously, to his eternal torture. When she wins Kyra’s gaze, when the other woman catches her watching and smiles in that crooked way, Kassandra thinks she understands him.

 

 

 

Later, she sees Kyra in the markets, trading the pearls for drachmae, the necklaces for arrows. She observes her unnoticed for a while, sees the way Kyra seems to know everyone, the respect in the faces of the locals who speak with her. Only when she passes beneath her does Kassandra drop down from the window where she’s perched and grin triumphantly at the other woman; Kyra nearly jumps in surprise then laughs, that long and easy laugh that makes Kassandra’s face warm.

“Come with me,” Kyra says, the only command Kassandra has ever needed.

She says nothing until they are walking away from the town, up the hill to the temple where Kyra likes to watch the sun, to study the outline of her enemy’s house and count the soldiers that change hands each dusk.

“You’re giving them away.”

Kyra looks up as if she has been caught, smirks. “Am I? I thought I was selling them.”

“I seem to recall that Thaletas gave them to you as gifts.”

“They are kind gestures, I know. I’m sure a finer lady would treasure them. But they are better spent serving the rebellion than tucked away in some corner of my room, and I may be too lowborn to truly appreciate them.” She nudges Kassandra with her elbow, her head tilting closer. “You will keep my secret, though, won’t you?”

Kassandra nods. “Of course.”

“Thank you.” Her fingers skate over the back of Kassandra’s hand, only for a moment, then fall onto the rail of the balcony. “It will stay between the two of us, then.”

Thrilled as Kassandra is to share something with Kyra, even this small kernel of knowledge, small but glowing brighter than the sun, she is not sure why the woman is so reluctant. “If you told Thaletas, I’m sure he would understand.”

“I did tell him once. He had given me a gold ring, and I told him I traded it for a few swords. I thought he would be proud of my shrewdness. At first he seemed wounded, then he became furious. As if he were a boy, as if I had denied him something he was owed.” Kyra sighs. “My poor, sweet Thaletas. He is so sentimental. At times, I fear he sees me for someone I have never been, and will never be. I think he believes that when this is all said and done, I will lose every sharp part of me, go soft and docile and be the wife he was raised to expect. Spartan men do not fear a fierce woman, but they are used to Spartan women, who still know their place when their fierceness is gone to rest. I am no such woman. I will never dull my teeth.”

At this, Kyra puts a hand to her own mouth, as if she has shocked herself. Kassandra watches her, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” Kyra says, shaking her head. “I’ve never spoken any of that aloud before.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I must sound so ungrateful.”

“You don’t. You aren’t.” She stretches, drops forward onto the rail. Focuses on the burning ember on the horizon. “Yours is a blessed union. The man who loves you, the man you love, he shares your cause.”

“Thaletas’ cause is Sparta.”

“You cannot begrudge him that. A Spartan’s cause is always Sparta.”

“Not you, though.”

Kassandra looks over at her, sees the other woman staring at her with an intensity that almost hurts. “So I’m a Spartan?”

“Kassandra the Eagle-Bearer is Kassandra of Sparta, they say.”

She lowers her head, tries not to scoff at the idea. “They say many things.”

“But Sparta is your home, is it not?”

“My home is Kephallonia.”

This seems to throw the other woman off-guard. Kyra blinks. “Kephallonia.”

“I was born in Sparta, but I came of age on Kephallonia. An orphan. A thief, then a fighter for coin. Now I am a _misthios_. I know no allegiance to Sparta. No allegiance to Athens either. They would have to earn it first.”

Kyra studies her, and there is a quiet moment, both of their eyes on each other, careful glances, then more confident ones, and Kassandra has not removed her armor but she feels suddenly bared, as if she stands naked in front of this woman. Finally, Kyra looks up at Kassandra, searching. “So who is your allegiance to, Eagle-Bearer? What is your cause?”

The one she swore to protect is dead. The one who expects her allegiance is far off now, waiting for her to pledge her fealty. But here she is, in the temple of Artemis on Mykonos, looking into the eyes of a woman who burns and burns like she carries the sun in her mouth. Let me turn to ash, Kassandra thinks. Let me be carried on the wind and lost in the sea.

“I don’t know,” she says, finally admitting a truth she has been hiding even from herself.

“Is that why you came here?”

“I came to answer your notice.”

“Then why are you the first _misthios_ to consider it? No one else who works for drachmae has answered. Even the dullest warrior would know that there is no coin here, no glory, only a long fight uphill. But if it was a cause you were seeking, a purpose for yourself…”

Kassandra’s hand drops to the hilt of her sword. “I am a blade that strikes where you command. That’s all.”

“I would ask more of you than that.” Kyra steps nearer, closes the gap between them. Her chin tilts upward. Her breath is warm and sweet on Kassandra’s jaw.

“So ask.”

A noise in Kyra’s throat, something like a moan held back and choked away, and she turns suddenly, steps as if staggering from a source of light that is too bright. Turns the sound into a laugh, and gone is the open expression, replaced by that wink, that crooked grin, as if even straight on you are looking at her sideways. Never getting the full measure of her. “So eager, Eagle-Bearer,” she says, her eyebrow raised.

Kassandra lets out a breath as if she has been holding it, joins her in the laughter. “The sign of an efficient _misthios_. I get right to work.”

“The tales are true, then.”

“All of them, you think?”

“I wouldn’t know yet.“ There is too much meaning in her expression. “A woman from Korinthia told a story of the Eagle-Bearer that I would be very interested to see for myself.”

“They appreciated my services in Korinthia.”

“I’m sure they did.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

She stays. She could leave at any time, with notices arriving from other islands, fleets of one allegiance or the other passing on the horizon, beckoning for a good toss into the sea and a pillaging of their cargo, but she stays. Barnabas and the men are far too exhilarated about the change. They become well-loved at the _tavernas,_ spend their days diving off the side of the ship and eating fruit where they dangle from the trees, sleeping on the beaches or in the arms of the soft-fleshed _pornai_ of Mykonos. When the time comes to move on, she thinks, there will be a great deal of grumbling about it. But for now, she has yet to fulfill her contract on the Silver Islands, and there is much to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kyra needs things done quietly, swiftly, with little fanfare. She wants death with minimal bloodshed, not out of a sense of mercy, but so they leave less of a trail.

“We will not draw their deaths out. Our anger on display will only satisfy them, even to their ends. Do it quickly, as if they were never here at all, and erase them.”

In short, she needs an assassin of considerable skill. Kassandra is one such assassin. Corrupt men die in their beds, needles driven into their necks. Throats are slit and drained over pots of water to keep a room clean. Bodies dragged to the ship and left in the sea. Overnight, an enemy of the people of Mykonos will be disappeared without a trace, only a few flecks of red on Kassandra’s cheeks a hint to his location. She returns to the cavern each time, dropping items onto Kyra’s table: jewels, chains, pouches of drachmae. Winks at the implication that they might be sold to fund the rebellion. Kyra smiles in wonder and approval.

“You are a marvel, Eagle-Bearer.”

“I promised your island’s freedom. I aim to deliver it.”

“I’m beginning to think you might actually succeed.”

“Didn’t I say I’d live up to the tales?”

“Which ones?”

“Which ones would you like?”

And Kyra will laugh hard and long, so pleased with the _misthios_ who comes each day to the entrance of the cave and waits patiently for another name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is little respite from a rebellion, but Kyra still hunts when she needs silence, and Kassandra accompanies her. Not because she needs the help, or the protection, but because Kyra asks. Always, in all things, it is because Kyra asks.

“It’s a fine bow you have,” Kyra says once, her eyes on the antlers in Kassandra’s hand, smoothed in certain sections from the constant grip of her fingers. “The only one I’ve seen like it before belonged to a Daughter of Artemis.”

“I didn’t know they were on the island.”

“I saw them only a handful of times as a girl. They came to Mykonos to visit the birthplace of their goddess. I always liked when they arrived, even if they paid none of us any attention. They have a wildness that I can admire.” She nods at the other woman. “I think I’d know if you were one of them, though.”

“It was a Daughter of Artemis that gave this to me.”

Kyra’s eyebrow raises, skeptical. “She did?”

“Well, it was a reward.”

A laugh from Kyra. “I can guess at how you earned it.”

Kassandra gives her a look, though every tease like this from the other woman makes her chest burn and ache, sets her heart flying in a way she knows it shouldn’t. “You’re only half-right.”

“Half-right?” That same familiar cackle. “Eagle-Bearer, your reputation considers to precede you.”

“It was no easy prize to win.”

“Oh, I’m _sure_.”

“Not like that. I had to prove myself as a hunter first, more than capable, near legendary with the beasts I had to face. She set me on a long set of tasks.”

“And you completed all of them?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Not all of them.”

“Why did you stop?”

“I could not face her anymore.” Her grip tightens on the bow.

Kyra studies her, quiet, listening carefully. Her tone is gentler than usual. “How is it your paths ever crossed? Most Daughters will put a flaming arrow in you before they’ll answer your greeting.”

“I met her in the hills outside of Delphi. She saved my life once.”

“You speak of her with sadness.”

“I feel...guilt.”

“Guilt?”

“I didn’t tell her that I wouldn’t return. The last time I delivered a pelt to her, she expected me back within another moon. But it’s been many moons, and I haven’t gone to her. I won’t, not again.”

“You  _should_ feel guilt, then,” Kyra says, her head dropping. She seems to be avoiding Kassandra’s eye now. “I can’t imagine waiting for you, not knowing if I’d ever see you again. That’s a cruel fate, Kassandra.”

“It was easier this way.”

“How?”

“It would have only been tragedy had I continued. We were too...different.” She sighs. She has not thought of this in a long time, not even when she picks up the bow, not even when she pulls an arrow from her quiver. She has let Daphnae fade into the past, like so many other things that seem eons and oceans away from her now.

“Did you love her?”

“Love?” Kassandra looks over at the other woman, puzzled by what she finds in Kyra’s expression, her eyes shining with emotion, her teeth clenching her lip between them. “No.”

“No?”

“I once thought that if it was another time, and we were different people, perhaps. But not as it was, no.”

Kyra’s laughter feels forced, quick and light and harsh. “I feel foolish.”

“Why?” Her chest seems to shake of its own accord; Kassandra fears that Kyra must be able to hear the raging thud of her heartbeat.

“For a moment, I almost…” but she turns away, her eye half-hidden by her hand. “It would be strange of me to feel envious, wouldn’t it? I don’t know why I would be.”

Kassandra’s mouth is suddenly dry. “Your heart is spoken for.”

“And you didn’t love her, you said.” A pause. “Have you ever loved in that way, Kassandra?”

“I don’t know.”

“I haven’t.”

“But Thaletas…”

“Oh.” Kyra covers her mouth with her hand, draws it away as if taking something with it. “Of course. Thaletas.” She looks at Kassandra. “Tell me what was so different about you and this woman. What was it that doomed you?”

“We believed different things about the way to live a life, about duty. About the gods. She served her goddess without question or compromise. You’ve met me.” She holds out her hands. “I’m sure you can understand why I wouldn’t feel the same way.”

“But you obey the gods.”

“I receive no orders from them to obey. If I did, though, I don’t know how well I would comply.”

“I pity the gods.”

Kassandra nearly laughs at this, serious as Kyra looks. “Why? They do not die, and feel no pain.”

“How can one measure a life if not in pain? What they possess should not be called a life at all.”

Kassandra winks at her. “Be careful a god does not hear you, and strike you down for your hearsay.”

“They would strike me down out of jealousy. They should envy what mortals have. The quicker the fire, the stronger it burns.”

“So given the chance, you would not seize at immortality?”

Kyra’s eyes glow with their familiar glint. “Never,” she says. “Let me burn brighter than any of them.”

“You do. I have never seen anything fiercer than your flame.”

“Don’t tease me, Eagle-Bearer.”

“I would never tease you.”

Her expression changes. “Perhaps I shouldn’t wish that you were sincere, either.”

“Is it so difficult to be admired?”

A slim smile, tilting at its corner. “Is that what this is? Admiration?”

“I haven’t put a name to it yet. I’ll tell you what it is when I know what to call it.”

Kyra’s hand goes to Kassandra’s cheek, cups it gently, more gentle than anything the woman has done in her presence. “Don’t say such things,” she says, her voice lowering to a whisper.

“Why?”

“Because.” Her cheeks burn red suddenly, and her hand drops, cradled to her front. She turns away. “It makes for too strange a conversation.”

“What is so strange about it?”

“Everything,” Kyra says, and steps further down the path, into shadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Supplies are running low,” Thaletas says, his heroic brow furrowed. His voice booms through the tunnels of the caves. “The embargo continues, and my men are beginning to question how much longer our food will last us.”

“ _Your_ food?” Kyra snorts at this. “Do you know how much this island has had to ration to prevent our people from starving?”

Thaletas’ shoulders are squared. “My men will not go without. I am their commander, and I am responsible for them. I refuse to keep them in unacceptable conditions.”

“Sacrifice is a necessary component of such a cause.” She rolls her eyes, tosses her hand into the air. “Do you think we live in this cave for its comforts?”

“And that is why you will not find a Spartan spending any unnecessary time within its walls.”

Kyra stands firm, her eyes glowing with threat. “A Spartan will find himself unwelcome here if he takes food from the mouths of Mykonos’ children.”

Thaletas has nothing more to say. He turns on his heel, followed by two of his glaring lieutenants. When they are gone, Kyra sighs, though her anger is still apparent.

“Sometimes it is so clear to me that he has never known hardship outside of battle.”

Kassandra shrugs. She puts down the sword she’s been sharpening, stretches. “A Spartan commander is expected to treat his men as though their blood runs in his veins.”

“I’m aware.” Kyra leans against the wall of the cave, arms folded. “He’s afraid, you know. He leads by being adored, not by being respected. He knows they will turn on him once they are no longer enamored.”

“You speak as though you think he is weak.”

Kyra looks at her. “Do I?”

Kassandra nods, unsure she wants to keep being the one to pull the threads from this particular rug. Yet it’s Kyra who always seems so determined to unravel it…

Finally, Kyra pushes away from the wall, her hands at her sides as if in defeat. “I should go to him,” she says quietly, reluctantly, clearly avoiding Kassandra’s eye. Kassandra waves her hand, tries to look as though it is no matter.

“Do what you think is right,” she says. Kyra leaves, and she goes back to sharpening her sword, listening to the sounds echoing in the cavern around her: snores, wine being poured into glasses, the slap of sandals on wet rock, a far-off splash from something falling into the water. She will sit here until she hears the familiar sound of Kyra’s footfall, hears her wry laughter, the teasing comments that seem meant to disarm her and stir her all at once. But hours pass and the cavern is unchanging, only the snores multiplying, and Kassandra sleeps upright against the damp wall, her legs folded beneath her, her arms crossed as if even in dreams, she is frustrated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They sit in the temple often, balanced on the balcony, or lying in the rays of sun that cut across the floor like the spear of Artemis herself. It is as much a place of deliberation for Kyra as the cavern; few disturb them, and Podarkes’ men never enter the temple grounds, making it safe to speak on certain things. Over time, Kyra reveals small glimpses of her childhood, her background, though only in glances, and only ever to Kassandra.

“I killed for the first time when I was a girl. My eleventh summer. I slept where I could then, whatever corners I fit into without being seen. I found a house with no one in it. I thought I’d be able to stay for a while, and I was happy. I felt rich. Do you know what it is to have nothing? Even the smallest things are wealth.”

“Yes,” Kassandra says, all too aware of the feeling.

“I woke one night to a man’s weight on top of me. His fingers were pulling at my chiton. When I fought him away, he tried to strangle me. But I always had a knife, the same one my mother had kept under her cloth, and I stabbed him in the neck. I wore his blood for three days. I could have bathed in the sea, but I refused. I was stained red until it turned brown and black as the earth, and I walked the streets with his body laid out in front of the house. I wanted no man to come for me in this way again. I wanted Mykonos to know I could not be touched.”

She’s unsure of what to say to this, if she should touch her on the arm, stand closer or further away. But Kyra’s face begs for no sympathy, always fierce and shining, so Kassandra only nods. “I’m sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry for.” She pauses. “Sometimes when you talk about Markos, I think that I was luckier than you.”

“Luckier?”

“You had someone who always wanted something from you. I was alone, but no one asked anything of me. What I did, I did because it was my choice, because I wanted it. What would you have been if no one had needed you as their tool?”

“Dead.” Kassandra snorts. “I’m sure I’d be dead.”

“I don’t know about that. You’re more capable than anyone who has ever stepped on this island. So capable you might be mistaken for a demigod.” She nods at the feet of Artemis. “Are you sure you aren’t the huntress in disguise, come to punish me for making the wrong choice?”

“Which choice have you made that was wrong?”

Kyra looks at her, half of her face illuminated to shimmering bronze in the ray of light, the other still cast in shadow, perfectly divided down the center of her features. “I would have said before that I was always right. Now I think there were many places that I strayed.”

 

 

 

Thaletas comes less to the cavern of the rebels. Podarkes paces in his manse, his numbers dwindling, his panic clear to any who keep watch. Kyra circles Kassandra, Kassandra circles Kyra, each time getting closer, each time rushing away when it is too clear, when the heat is too much, when both acknowledge with their glances that they know the meaning of that word, or that touch, or that long silence.

“You have tied yourself to Kyra,” Barnabas says, the taste of wine on both of their tongues. Kassandra sees his expression in the torchlight, the wink even in his tone, the warmth of his smile. The ship rocks beneath them, lapped gently by the tide of the harbor.

“To her cause, yes.”

“No, Kassandra, I am not a fool.” He tilts his head. “To the woman herself.”

She rolls her eyes. “Kyra is promised to Thaletas, you know this.”

“I do not believe a woman like that can be promised to anyone. She chooses for herself, doesn’t she?”

“And she’s chosen Thaletas.”

“I would not be so sure.”

She points a finger at him, swigs her wine. “ _Barnabas_.”

He shrugs, too pleased with himself. “I am not wrong, Kassandra. I know that much."

 

 

 

Of course it was always heading here. From the second she received the notice, from the first step she took from the ship onto the shore of Mykonos, from the wet notes of the cavern when she slipped into its reaches, from the knife that struck the wood so close to her cheek. She would always have crumpled like a downed bird for this woman. She would always have desired her, and let her fall into her arms. Surely, somewhere, in some time long ago, an oracle spoke this prophecy into existence. Surely a god had divined it as a truth to be woken on this island, between these two bodies.

Kyra shudders against her, gasps and cries. Kassandra’s hand disappears, clenched tight in the other woman, held there as if this mere act could bind them together in the afterlife itself.

Later, she begins to pull out, but Kyra shakes her head, reaches down to clasp Kassandra’s wrist. “Stay,” she says. She wraps her arms around Kassandra’s neck, her legs folded on either side of Kassandra’s thighs. “Don’t leave me yet.”

“I won’t leave you,” Kassandra whispers, her fingers flexing just enough to make Kyra groan again. But Kyra’s eyes are gleaming, a streak of wet catching the moonlight where it falls down her cheek.

“You will.” She breathes harder, trembles. “You know that you will.”

 

 

 

The spray of the ocean keeps the air damp and cool, the breeze pushing her hair across her cheek. As if the gods have made this sand with their own hand, it cushions their bodies like a bed, like the softest of clouds in the heavens.

“It should have been you,” she hears Kyra whisper, the woman’s finger stroking her jaw. Kassandra opens her eyes. Kyra presses closer, her finger paused on the edge of Kassandra’s mouth. “It should have always been you.”

Kassandra reaches over to clasp Kyra’s hand in hers. Pulls it down, holds it between them. “I don’t want to be the source of your tragedy.”

And Kyra’s eyes have never shone like this before. Her lips have never cinched in this particular way. The sound released from between them is not a sigh or a breath, but something else, something like a soul escaping. “My life has always been a tragedy, Eagle-Bearer. Long before you came along, I had accepted my lot.” Her fingers twitch in Kassandra’s grip. “No, I could have been content with tragedy. But you made me want something else, something beautiful, and that is what is so much harder.”

 

 

 

Podarkes’ blood is on her hands. She rubs, unthinking, at her brow, knows she’s streaked it there like the mark of Ares, tries again to wipe it away. No matter. The doll is in her fist.

She hesitates before she knows she must go to the cavern, to tell Kyra all that has been revealed. She goes instead to stand in the temple of Artemis, praying for an intervention that will not come.

She waits as long as she can, until the sun climbs the sky and Helios descends, until Selene takes her place and nudges her out into the blue light of night, then down into the wet womb of the cavern, releasing her to Hades himself.

Now everything spins beyond her control, faster and faster, as though it means to drive a hole through her heart.

 

 

 

Like Antigone, like Medea, like Oedipus, like Iphigenia, she stands before the end she knew would come. On the beach, Thaletas waits. Kyra will not know until it is too late.

Yes, it may well have been destined, or written by the hand of the great playwrights. Kassandra trembles before the final act. She cannot turn back now. She cannot escape it. She must wait until the stage breaks beneath her.

And she steps forward, her heart Kyra’s, her fate never her own, her tale far from over. She wishes it would end here, but it will not. _Let me go to Phoibe now,_ she thinks. _I have failed them all. Let it be over._

But still, it beats on, the tide, the tide, and her ankles always wet, from blood or from the sea, never letting her out of its grip.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. during: kos & hydrea

 

 

 

 

 

It is a cloudless sky for eight days, and she misses none of it, on her back in the ship, her view only occasionally obscured by Barnabas’ concerned face, bending over to take the wine from her hands.

“Kassandra,” he whispers, the age of the sea in his voice and expression, the salt and the spray. Or perhaps, she thinks, those are his tears. “No more of this.”

She closes her eyes, and yet she knows he still stands over her.

“Kassandra.”

“No.” She covers her face, groaning. Reaches blindly for the wineskin. 

“You are the commander.”

“And you are the captain, so I give you my position. Go wherever you decide.” She drains the last of the wine, the leather crumpling under her hand. “If I die, the ship is yours anyhow.”

“Kassandra, it will take more wine than this to kill you. You have the tolerance of a demigod.”

“Then we should get more.”

He shakes his head, drops a hand to her brow. Holds it still there, a fatherly gesture. “Very well, Kassandra.”

 

 

She dreams that she is on Kephallonia, walking up the road to the house, her armor dusty, her feet sore. All of her aches with exhaustion, but she keeps going, almost sobbing with relief at the thought of sleeping in her bed again.

Phoibe is up on the roof, standing when she sees her. “Kassandra,” she calls down, waving. “Why have you come home so soon?”

Kassandra nearly collapses when she steps through the gate, her knees hitting the packed earth in a way that makes her cry out. But a hand cups her chin, tilts her head up.

“Be strong,” Kyra says, stooping to kiss her on the forehead. She brings Kassandra to her feet, leading her into the house where Phoibe stands, hands on her hips, eyes shining like they always did, that grin with the missing tooth at the front that she had a few summers before she died. Kyra musses her hair as she passes her, Phoibe smirking up at her. 

Kassandra drops again to her knees once she is inside. She pulls Phoibe into her arms, crying into her shoulder as she holds her as tightly as she can.

“Don’t cry, Kassandra,” Phoibe says. 

“But I cannot stay,” she says, wetting Phoibe’s chiton with her tears. “I just want to stay. Don’t make me go back.” Phoibe’s hands go to either side of Kassandra’s face.

“Why don’t you want to go back?”

“I belong here with you.”

“No, no,” Phoibe says, smiling in the old way, all lit up like the sun. “You have so much more to do.”

“I don’t want anything else to do, Phoibe. I want it all to be done.”

“You’re not so tired as that, Kassandra. You are the best _ misthios _ in all of Greece!”

“It is too much,” she whispers. She closes her eyes, feels the girl’s chest rise and fall against her. She is breathing, Kassandra thinks. Let me stay here so long as she breathes again. 

“Not for you. Remember who you are, Kassandra.” Phoibe takes her hand, presses it into Kyra’s. “Come, Kassandra,” she says. “Kyra will take you back.”

“No, little satyr. Please let me stay.”

“Shh,” Kyra whispers, pulling her up and away. “It will be alright.”

“Don’t worry,” Phoibe says, giving her a final hug. “I will wait for you here.”

And it is Kyra who leads her back out of the house, walks her towards the gate and the road which seems to stretch now into an eternal horizon of blue water. Their feet make no prints in the sand, no noise as they fall. And when she looks over at Kyra, she sees she is wearing the same colors as the night on the beach, her hair tousled just as it was when Kassandra had seen her last.

Kassandra sniffs, wipes at her eyes like a child. She feels like a child, lost and ready to sleep, eager to be claimed by someone else, finally brought home. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Kyra flashes one of those crooked smirks of hers. “I am right where you left me, Kassandra. There is much to do on Mykonos.”

“You told me to leave.”

“So I did.” Kyra’s fingers lace with her own, and she steps into the water, pulling Kassandra into the tide with her. “But you know where to find me when you are ready to return.”

 

 

  
When she wakes, she stumbles to the side of the ship, vomiting in the sea for what could pass as an eternity, until it seems every corner of her has been emptied, until all that is left is the wet choke of bile and the salt of her tears running into her mouth. When she looks up at the horizon, she sees a storm forming, the dark clouds rolling into each other, the quick thin flash of far-off lightning. 

Barnabas is at her shoulder, a hand on her back. “The gods answer you, Kassandra.”

She can hardly meet his gaze, her mouth crusted white, her eyes red. She feels ashamed now. “And what do they say, Barnabas?”

“You can hear them for yourself,” he says. Thunder shudders in the distance. Lightning strikes again, illuminating the grey outline of an island through the dark.

She remembers the flash of lightning as she fell from the cliff, the smell of electricity and scorched earth when she rose up and took off barefoot, her small body unharmed and full of a fire that would never stop burning, to run and run until her calves were struck by the sea. 

“Water,” Kassandra says, her hand gripping the wooden rail as tightly as she can. “I need water. And turn the ship to make for that island.”

Barnabas nods. “Yes, commander.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Markos is not the face she expects to see in this cage, and yet she isn’t surprised at all. That he would have fled like a rat from a flood and tucked himself away in some corner where he could survive, ride out the rising tide; yes, it is as Markos would have set out to do a long time ago, she’s sure. It's not until he has returned to the vineyard, settled in and shown her around, that she sees the old him returning. She cocks her head at him.

“You look well-rested,” she says.

“Funny,” he says. “You look like shit.”

“Not funny at all.”

“You are a long way from where you started, Kassandra. Coin’s been good?”

“You’d love to know, wouldn’t you?” She drops onto the bench in his yard, beckons one of the girls forward. “Let’s see if this wine of yours is still donkey piss.”

 

 

He needs favors. Of course he does. But she is still silently grateful for his unchanged and angling ways, his voice sloppy with drink and that dark humor that comes out in the creases. He’s always wanted the world to think him hapless. And he can be foolish, he can be reckless, but oh, he is never quite as hapless as he seems. If she closes her eyes, they could be back in the villa, arguing about something else, and even the quarreling is comforting somehow. It’s the closest she’s felt to Kephallonia in a long time, this frustration with him, this anger, because all of it is familiar.

He has dinner made for them, and he has more slaves here than he ever had in servants before, nearly thirty of them in and out of the house and weaving through the lines of vines. She eats fish, figs, listens to him talk about what drove him here, but it builds after a while, the tension she feels. They never ate this well on Kephallonia. He rarely let her sit at his table, which was half the reason she took the other house for herself. Now she thinks of who is not here, who should be here, who should never have left in the first place.

“Phoibe’s dead.”

“What?” He shakes his head, sighing. “I had no idea. Where?”

“In Athens.”

“That is the way of the world these days, isn’t it?”

“Why did you let her go?”

He gives her a look, thrown by her question. “Because she wanted to go.”

“She was a child, Markos. She didn’t know what she wanted.”

“Every night after you left, that was all I heard. _ I am going on the road like Kassandra. I am going to be useful like Kassandra. _ She wanted to start training. Something beyond the life a thief, and more power to her.”

“She could have done that on Kephallonia.”

Markos shrugs, pouring himself more wine. “But it wasn’t what she wanted.”

“It didn’t matter!” She slams her hand on the table, spilling both of their drinks. “It was not up to her to decide what was best for her.”

His eyes have narrowed, but his tone remains unaffected. “I am not her _ pater, _ Kassandra.”

“No, you weren’t. But you were the closest she would ever have, and you knew that.”

“She was a street thief, Kassandra. What did she know of a family, eh? I was her boss, nothing more. She never would have listened.” He leans forward. “I know you were fond of her, but this is how it goes. You get a dozen of these little pickpockets, six will be dead by the end of the season. That is the reality. You deal in blood and coin, so I know you understand. We live in times that are cruel to the innocent.”

“Phoibe was special.”

“She was, she was a special girl, you’re right. But she was still a street thief, Kassandra. It would have been a miracle if she’d gotten out like you. You have to realize how rare you are. If anything, it was the expectation you established that doomed her. You put these dreams in their heads, but only  _ you _ could ever achieve them. It’s unfair, you know?”

“Don’t place her death on me.”

“I don’t. I place her death on whatever Athenian slit her throat.”

“That isn’t how she died.”

“Whatever it was, Kassandra, you cannot sit here and try to find a responsible party. She is gone. It is a pity. I liked Phoibe, she was a funny little girl. But I lost four others before I came here to this island. This is the way of the world.”

She gets up from the table, ready to leave, but Markos takes her arm.

“I’m sorry, Kassandra.” He’s making that expression again, the one that always used to keep her in her place; the pathetic one, that helpless look. “I really am. Listen, you can stay here tonight, can’t you? I can feed you, and I can put more coin in your hand if you help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“It’ll be easier than on Kephallonia, and more just. You’ll be saving my skin from crooks.” He smiles the old smile. “You owe me, no?”  


 

 

A woman and girl die when she sets the last granary on fire. The fields take flame immediately, spreading too fast for anyone to contain, and Kassandra watches the farmer and his wife run out to stop it, too late, the wife grabbing for a child who screams from the field, disappearing too quickly for Kassandra to find her.

He lied. Markos lied, and now there are more innocent souls gone to Hades. She sees them die and she yells loud enough for Zeus to be rousted awake, for the skies to open up and strike her down if they wanted. And doesn’t she wish for just that when she sees the scenes unfolding before her?

The father cradles the little girl, what is left of her. It is ghastly. And Kassandra knows what it is to hold a weight that small against your body, to try and will it back to life. 

 

 

“I’m leaving.” 

“What? But they’re coming now. They’re coming to finish us off.”

“You lied,” she says, plainly. “It was the wrong farm, Markos. They did nothing wrong and now they are dead.”

“So I made a mistake, Kassandra. Do you think I would ever do it on purpose?”

“It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done now. Their blood is on your hands.”

“ _ Your _ hands, Kassandra.”

“No,” she says, spinning on him, her nostrils flaring with anger. “I was your instrument, and I am done. Never again, Markos. I’m going back to the ship.”

“Please,” Markos says, flailing at her, panic in his eyes. “You don’t understand. If you leave, they’ll kill me.”

“I understand,” she says, untying Phobos. 

He grabs at her arm, pulling her roughly towards him. “Kassandra, you are my right hand. I saved your life. I gave you everything.” His hand slaps Phobos’ rump. “By Hades, I gave you this horse. You cannot leave your Markos, not after all this.”

“I don’t owe you anything anymore.”

“You are the only one that can protect me.” His face is blotchy, red and white the way it always gets when he’s desperate. Though she knows she has never seen him this desperate before. “I need you, Kassandra.”

“Phoibe needed you.

He releases her. Steps back as she mounts Phobos, silent, his expression set in stone, the mask of a man in horror, now eternal. 

She does not look back. Not once.

  
  
  


 

 

Sparring in the yellow air of Hydrea is the first time in months that she has not felt the weight on her back. It is just her and Roxana, the smell of sweating heaving bodies and the sound of soft grunts from their efforts. She has no interest in this grand competition Roxana is so settled on, but the ship needs repairs and the bay is deep and none in the crew are up for protesting. She agrees to train her for coin, and then puts aside the notion of payment when she hears more about the girl’s plight. Roxana is earnest and focused, open about all she must shoulder, but she is young, so young, and Kassandra knows better than most what it is to carry everyone else’s burdens.

Each morning has them racing to the highest point on the island. Kassandra lays on the flat rock there, panting to catch her breath. All of the island is this way, dark as ash and spitting a sharp outline up against the sky, so often overcast with clouds that are pale and sulfuric. Even so, the rock underneath her is warm as flesh, as if a heart beat beneath it. She looks over at Roxana, but the girl’s eyes are on the horizon.

“Where were you before you came to Hydrea?”

“Everywhere,” Kassandra says, unsure of the most honest way to answer. 

“I would like to see this ‘everywhere’ of yours,” Roxana teases.

“You’re young. You’ve time to do all that and more.”

Roxana’s laugh holds no mirth in it. “Time is not means. It is harder than you think to get off this island. Didn’t you notice?”

She has. They’d seen only hovels from the docks and it has been only hovels since she landed: weary refugees from other islands, escaped slaves, drunk sailors sleeping in their own piss, poor traders who lose their ships and try to work to get them back. But there is no work here to make that much coin, that is clear, and the ships that stop in its harbor are few and far between. What industry is there here besides the sour smoke and ash that rises from the small quarry, nearing its end of bounty?

“That’s why you need to win,” Kassandra says. “Not just the glory. The opportunity to leave.”

Roxana shrugs. “This is as far as my family came. From Cyprus, they brought me here, and before that, my father came up the river and the sands from Aethiopia and found my mother. Roshanak, she was called, and he named me for her. Their story was not supposed to end here. They should have gone elsewhere, further west or north, or maybe back south to my father’s land or to hers, across the water to the east. Every direction should have been theirs. But this is where it ended.” She casts her hand around her, sighs. “This place of all places.”

“So you will pick it up where they left off. Earn glory in their names and then move on.” She rubs at her eye, a thought in mind. “You know the Adrestia could always use fighters.”

Roxana doesn’t even need to think on this, it seems. Her response is immediate, the hunger apparent in her voice. “I couldn’t pay you yet. Not until the prize, and only if I survive to win it.”

“You will win it. I know it.”

Roxana laughs, getting to her feet. “Only if we train harder.”

 

 

The girl’s more than a decent fighter for her age, determined and strong, but Kassandra sees from the very start the way she looks at her. Sees the younger woman’s admiration turned so quickly to something else, her eyes so wide and attentive and eager. Roxana doesn’t yet know how to hide her intent; instead, it shines with blinding clarity from her smiles, the way her lips keep getting caught on her teeth.

So Kassandra is not at all shocked when Roxana turns towards her for a kiss one evening, her eyes closed, her mouth half-open, and Kassandra has to duck to miss it. Roxana’s lips catch Kassandra’s braid instead, and her eyes flutter open, confused.

“I’m sorry,” Kassandra starts, but Roxana is shaking her head, cheeks pink.

“No, no, I thought…” The younger woman stares at her own hands, calloused from fighting. “I should have asked.”

Kassandra can only repeat herself. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop.” Her apology seems to only upset her more, the girl frowning, turning away. “Are you...are you spoken for?”

Kassandra can only think of the bloody sand, turning the tide pink on that beach in Mykonos. She nods once, says nothing more.

“I feel foolish.”

“Don’t.” She tries to give her a sympathetic smile. “What you want, Roxana, I am not the one who can give you that, I’m sorry. But someday--”

“Someday,” Roxana says, her tone more bitter. “Always I am told it will be someday. Someday I will leave, someday we will not be so hungry, someday I will have a husband, a Greek husband, who will take me away from here and not just let me die on this cursed island. Someday I will win. Someday it will change. I want no more somedays. Today, that’s what I want. Today.”

She gets to her feet, walks down the hill towards the hut where she sleeps, where Kassandra has chosen to never go despite invitations, innocent as they may sound. In her stomach, the hard stone of guilt. But no, she is too young, Kassandra thinks. Too good. And what is Kassandra but just the curse Roxana already knows? Something that can only make darkness from light. The carrier of death just as sure as the water of Athens. Kassandra can only bring pain now, no matter her intent.

 

 

Barnabas wants them to leave with the tide but she shakes her head, waiting for the results of the Battle. The crew sits idle, passing wine between them, some napping, some singing, and Kassandra listens as Helios carries the sun lower, until the sky turns the same color as fresh-spilled blood, and the figure appears as an outline against such a hue, walking down the road to the harbor.

Roxana wears the colors of victory. She looks up at Kassandra from the dock, a slice of red weeping from her forehead.

“Do you still need a fighter?”

Kassandra nods. “Welcome to the Adrestia.” 

By evening, they are further at sea and Roxana is sparring on the decks with Odessa, the two girls knocking into each other, springing out of reach or making quick impact with their elbows. When Roxana has Odessa on her back, she offers the other girl her hand, pulls her back onto her feet. Odessa looks at her, and they are quiet, something passing between them for a moment, long enough for Roxana to turn red and duck her head. Kassandra watches, smirking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i don't mind the combination of ancient greek words and more contemporary language in the game (i think it serves the tone super well, actually), so i've tried to do something similar with the dialogue in this work.
> 
> a glossary of terms used in this work:
> 
> malaka - i mean yall already know by now  
> pater - father  
> misthios - mercenary  
> kapeleia - ancient greek equivalent of a bar (kind of)...taverna but for alcohol  
> peplos - shawl garment worn by ancient greek women  
> pornai - the most common level of prostitute in ancient greece. divided into two categories, those with pimps and those who were independent (typically those who walked the streets of cities or were established in a brothel)  
> pornoboskós - ancient greek pimp  
> khamaitypếs - shitty term for a prostitute, ‘one who hits the ground'  
> taverna - ancient greek equivalent of a restaurant (kind of)...kapeleia but for food  
> kuna - essentially the ancient greek word for "bitch", though it has a lot of implications  
> chiton - garment worn by men and women - worn by spartan women for athletics, and thus a good choice for a female warrior


End file.
